How do you drill a well in waters where the US Government has told you that you can't because it's dangerous off shore drilling ... and you're the very Oil Corp that has proven it can't be trusted?
Easy! Move Off Shore ... to On Shore!
Two weekends ago I was privileged to attend, as a guest (rather than a participant) a conference devoted to developing a coordinated research program to measure the impact of the BP oil disaster on Gulf of Mexico coastal ecosystems. I'm going to attempt to give you an overview of the main points and show you some pictures to go along with them.
Beach in Panama City, Florida in fall 2008. This was the easternmost point (that I know of) where oil came ashore during June 2010.
Note: There will not be an 'A More Ancient World' diary next weekend.
NOTE: The following is purely opinion, and is offered only for a bit of wry perspective on our world.
Imagine that you were born fabulously wealthy. As an infant you had no idea that there was a great treasure at your disposal, and relied upon others to provide for your every need. As you grew, you began to hear mentions of the wonderful inheritance that was yours, a thing of fabulous value, and wondered about what it could be. You only knew that one day it would be yours.
The Chicken Little fable* was created as a cautionary tale against panic and mass hysteria in uncertain times. But there are times when the sky is failing and Chicken Little needs to be careful of taking advice from smooth talking strangers wearing Wall Street tweed. On to our story.
Once upon a time, there was a Fox named Loxy, a shrewd little fellow with a big appetite. One fine summer's day, Foxy Loxy was on the prowl for unlocked henhouses when he overheard Farmer Brown proclaim to her husband that their well was running dry. Without water for the corn, feeding the hens was going to be a big problem.
Foxy Loxy had a plan. Pass the bad news to the hens and con them to take a little journey to his den.
Before we return to our story, note that Foxy Loxy in this enactment will be played by Charles Maxwell, senior energy analyst at Weeden & Co.
The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from BP's drilling platform that exploded and killed 11 workers fouled key fishing areas, befouled wildlife and relentlessly threatened to ruin the region's beaches and tourism industry. But perhaps the biggest shock was the out-of-control oil plume's jolt to Americans' sense of national security.
I just finished reading a book, “Lincoln and his Wife’s Hometown”, because I need to maintain my status as a history nerd. Believe me, you have to read the right things if you want to keep the ladies away. Mary Todd Lincoln grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, the largest slaveholding area of the Bluegrass, and the book documents how Abraham Lincoln’s visits to this city defined and shaped his views on slavery. The book also made me realize how much the slaveholding power of the antebellum South reminds me of the oil industry today.
During its time, the slaveholding faction exerted more influence on the government than any other special interest group, just like the wildly wealthy and influential oil elite. They had so much power in fact, our founding fathers purposely excluded the word “slavery” from the Constitution in order to avoid the subject for fear of angering their slaveholding constituents. They thought if we avoided it, it would eventually just go away. Then the Civil War happened and George Washington felt pretty awkward in Heaven. That’s how powerful the slaveholding elite was – we fought a war over it. And God knows we would never fight a war to protect our oil interests. That would be silly.
I can't believe I am doing this. Writing a diary that mirrors the title of one currently on the rec list (just left the rec list I guess). But I feel compelled to write a bit on this topic as I have frequently been frustrated by the response of many here to the BP oil disaster. And the reversal of the title was too good to resist (and I should add that I have nothing but respect for the diarist in question). The responses tI refer to are understandable in view of the magnitude of the issue, the general political situation, and the lack of a coherent and open response from those in charge. But they are also somewhat self-defeating. I'll explain.
Beneath the fold you will find news and notes, community announcements, and our eco-diary roundup.
Peruse the eKos Library to find previously listed diaries. You can also follow eKos on Twitter.
Tonight's editor: ellinorianne
Please remember to rec the BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 90
And don't forget to check out Ecojustice, tonight's diary is EcoJustice: Coming to Ecuador, with or without Chevron
All views expressed by today's editor do not necessarily represent those of eKos or eKos listed diarists.
A few weeks ago I had the great privilege of meeting Lou Dematteis, a former Reuters staff photographer who covered the wars that raged throughout Central America in the 1980s and first traveled to Ecuador's northern Amazon region in 1993.
What he found there was not a shooting war, but a war on the environment, a gut-wrenching clash between the "civilized" world's thirst for cheap oil and indigenous people's right to live in health and harmony with their native lands.
Lou's photos not only tell the story of the human and ecological cost of our oil addiction, but they've been invaluable visual documents helping to keep Chevron/Texaco, the culprit of this epic environmental catastrophe, from engaging in "pollute and run" business as usual.
Most importantly, these images highlight the power of local communities not only in fighting the corporate juggernaut that is fleecing the planet's resources for short term profits, but in calling attention to the systemic problems inherent in fossil fuel dependent economic models, and inspiring sustainable solutions for all.
Take a ride and see for yourself.
I wrote about the issue this week because of a great piece at Alternet, Gas Is Really Costing Us About $15 a Gallon and tied it together with another piece about OPEC, OPEC and Low Oil Prices, 'Raising the entry barrier for alternative fuels'.
It's an issue that cannot be covered enough, especially since we're seeing the environmental impact on our very shores and the external costs around the globe in disasters.
The external costs are those not added to the true cost, the cost we pay at the pump and those who usually pay that cost are the poor, the least of us who live on the outskirts of our society, either in our own Country or Globally in less developed Countries.
But as the Gulf nightmare has shown, the costs will become more apparent at home.
and wait -- there's more!
22 miles long, 1.2 miles wide and 650 feet tall -- about 60 stories -- 3000 feet underwater!
That's no plume, that's a massive toxic cloud that shows no sign of abating. BP's dispersant legacy. Perhaps it's lucky that it's not showing signs of abating, since that would mean oil-eating microbes would be eating it with an oxygen chaser, and that layer is currently not showing severe oxygen-depletion. We wouldn't want a dead zone at 3000 feet.
But that toxic cloud is still a problem for a very important reason: the "Deep Scattering Layer," or DSL, which is the great, dense, daily dumbwaiter of thick marine life that moves up toward the surface, and then back down again, in a constant cycle.
Moving daily through this toxic cloud.
Some thoughts on offshore oil drilling.... crossposted at my blog, http://lurkerspace.blogspot.com/
It should have been a no-brainer that quick eradication of months of erupting oil into the Gulf might still have some lingering impacts that is likely to threaten the health of wildlife, the Gulf, and the planet for well into the future.
New research confirms this, according the New York Times report:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
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.
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.
It was the summer of 2008 and high Gas prices were getting people to think about how much they drove. It was getting a lot of people to rethink the cars they purchased and it was actually making a lot of headlines.
High Gas Prices Cause Bike Shortages in N.Y.
High gas prices are causing spot shortages of bikes in New York City, as commuters turn to pedal power.
Many of these new cyclists are from areas not commonly associated with the "Bike Belt" — neighborhoods such as the Upper West Side and Williamsburg in Brooklyn — but are instead from Queens and other places where driving to work has long been common and affordable. With gas costing nearly $4 a gallon, these commuters are switching to bikes, leaving some stores short on fashionable brands and preferred colors.
Beneath the fold you will find news and notes, community announcements, and our eco-diary roundup.
Peruse the eKos Library to find previously listed diaries. You can also follow eKos on Twitter.
Tonight's editor: ellinorianne
Please remember to rec the BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 83
All views expressed by today's editor do not necessarily represent those of eKos or eKos listed diarists.
Until carbon producers transit from producing profits from carbon, we won't have alternatives. It's an insane round robin. A not-so-merry-go-round.
There are $Trillions upon $Trillions of gross revenues left for oil/coal/gas companies to suck out of the earth both on and offshore. This is why they will never change their ways until forced to do so.
Oil companies have made record profits, more than many countries' GDP.
Let's tax those profits with a
Carbon Conversion Tax (CCT)
The end users like power companies and consumers can't change their ways until other ways are created.
And other ways can't be created without new sources.
And new sources won't be up and running fast enough without money. The oil/coal/gas producers are making huge profits. As long as the oil/coal/gas companies are raking in their huge profits and keeping them, they won't change.
Therefore, we tax their profits and use this revenue to produce the alternative energies.
It's plain and simple. It's brilliant. It's straightforward. It's easy. It's at least an idea!
Project Gulf Impact is in between. Floating somewhere in a venn diagram between activism, journalism, documentary filmmaking, social media, and trying to accurately convey what's actually going on in the Gulf of Mexico. "It would be adding a crime to a crime," Thad Allen said, "if we didn't make this one of the great learning laboratories in the history of this country." And indeed we are. PGI has been told, interview after interview, that this is "the grand experiment." I don't find "grand" to be the choice word, but you get the idea.
One of the pleasures of operating the way we do - on a shoestring budget that barely affords us two meals a day and the gas to get from one interview to the next and not much else - is that we get the opportunity, the privilege, of staying in the homes of Gulf coast residents that we have met along the way. These homes - warm environments where "home cooking" still means something (especially to the Cajuns!) - make me miss the trips to my grandparent's homes in the midwest and southern Texas more than anything else.
Yesterday we spent the day indoors (thankfully) at Louisiana State University interviewing professors from schools across campus. We spoke with experts that represented a range of disciplines, from toxicology to ichthyology. Despite their diverse set of backgrounds, we heard one message loud and clear: our future is uncertain. The need for funding for rigorous research, for both today and years to come, is crucial. As we continue to fight traditional media's assertion that the oil is gone, the situation in the Gulf grows more dire.
When asked what message the scientists and professors wished to convey to the world, they unanimously answered: “the oil spill is not over.”
Project Gulf Impact wants to use its diary in the Daily Kos Blogathon for the next three days to allow residents of the Gulf to be heard. Project Gulf Impact is down in the Gulf right now conducting interviews and launching preliminary relief efforts to give the citizens of the Gulf a voice, a chance that is long overdue for Gulf residents.
