May 21, 2010--Worse Than Katrina
Doesn't this sound sadly familiar:
Yesterday marked the one-month anniversary of the disaster. "Disaster," not "spill." And yet the crude oil keeps gushing and neither BP nor the Obama administration has a plan to contain it or the technical capacity to do so. The oil has reached Key West and will soon, it is expected, swing around southern Florida and work its way up the east coast. All coastal wetlands and beaches are imperiled. The eventual economic and ecological costs are incalculable.
The blame-game is in full play. BP blames Transocean, the company it hired to carry out the actual drilling; they in turn are blaming the company (Halliburton) to whom they subcontracted much of the work; and the Obama administration is tepidly blaming all of them.
They are all right. They are all complicitous; they are all guilty.
BP lied when they applied for a license to do the drilling, contending that they had all the knowledge, experience, and capacity to avoid and contain any "incident." They had none of the above.
The Bush administration is to blame because it failed to do any due diligence to see if BP, or any other oil companies drilling in our offshore waters had any of these capacities.
And now the Obama administration is to blame because it failed to double-check the government's ability either to quickly assess the damage from disasters of this kind, and as a consequence are left to depend on BP's own self-serving reporting about the extent of the disaster and how to deal with it, or make sure the government has it own resources to solve problems of this magnitude.
How could Barack Obama just a few months ago announce that he was planning to expand the areas where offshore drilling would be allowed without having done the homework about the government's capacity to take charge of a crisis of this kind? I recall him saying at the time that he felt this was safe technology because during Hurricane Katrina none of the oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico reported any leaks.
Well, this is his Katrina. Actually it is a situation worse than Katrina since it will eventually do much more damage, much more irreparable damage.
So what are we left with? All Obama has done thus far is particip[ate in the cover up and finger pointing. Finally last week, after BP and Halliburton and Transocean testified at a Congressional investigation, he emerged from his Oval Office cocoon and in the Rose Garden squeaked out a few words of criticism:
"I know BP has committed to pay for the response effort, and we will hold them to their obligation. I have to say, though, that I did not appreciate what I considered to be a ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings into this matter."
"I did not appreciated . . ." How pathetic the rhetoric.
Since he uttered these few words on May 14th, we haven't heard another thing from him about this. And all we have heard then was scripted, read off his ubiquitous teleprompter, and lacked any real sense of passion or urgency. I'm OK with no-drama-Obama about a host of issues; but about this, I expect him to express genuine outrage.
More important, I expect action. He and his administration are still allowing BP to report about what is happening (mainly lying about the extent of the gusher and what they have done to contain it--they are covering their corporate asses since massive liability suits are looming) and are standing passively by while BP tries to deal with the catastrophe.
If George Bush failed to act expeditiously and effectively when Katrina struck, Obama is doing even worse about a much more perilous situation. I suspect that he will pay a similar political price.
Tensions between the Obama administration and the scientific community over the gulf oil spill are escalating, with prominent oceanographers accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill's true scope. (New York Times, May 20. Linked below.)
Yesterday marked the one-month anniversary of the disaster. "Disaster," not "spill." And yet the crude oil keeps gushing and neither BP nor the Obama administration has a plan to contain it or the technical capacity to do so. The oil has reached Key West and will soon, it is expected, swing around southern Florida and work its way up the east coast. All coastal wetlands and beaches are imperiled. The eventual economic and ecological costs are incalculable.
The blame-game is in full play. BP blames Transocean, the company it hired to carry out the actual drilling; they in turn are blaming the company (Halliburton) to whom they subcontracted much of the work; and the Obama administration is tepidly blaming all of them.
They are all right. They are all complicitous; they are all guilty.
BP lied when they applied for a license to do the drilling, contending that they had all the knowledge, experience, and capacity to avoid and contain any "incident." They had none of the above.
The Bush administration is to blame because it failed to do any due diligence to see if BP, or any other oil companies drilling in our offshore waters had any of these capacities.
And now the Obama administration is to blame because it failed to double-check the government's ability either to quickly assess the damage from disasters of this kind, and as a consequence are left to depend on BP's own self-serving reporting about the extent of the disaster and how to deal with it, or make sure the government has it own resources to solve problems of this magnitude.
How could Barack Obama just a few months ago announce that he was planning to expand the areas where offshore drilling would be allowed without having done the homework about the government's capacity to take charge of a crisis of this kind? I recall him saying at the time that he felt this was safe technology because during Hurricane Katrina none of the oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico reported any leaks.
Well, this is his Katrina. Actually it is a situation worse than Katrina since it will eventually do much more damage, much more irreparable damage.
So what are we left with? All Obama has done thus far is particip[ate in the cover up and finger pointing. Finally last week, after BP and Halliburton and Transocean testified at a Congressional investigation, he emerged from his Oval Office cocoon and in the Rose Garden squeaked out a few words of criticism:
"I know BP has committed to pay for the response effort, and we will hold them to their obligation. I have to say, though, that I did not appreciate what I considered to be a ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings into this matter."
"I did not appreciated . . ." How pathetic the rhetoric.
Since he uttered these few words on May 14th, we haven't heard another thing from him about this. And all we have heard then was scripted, read off his ubiquitous teleprompter, and lacked any real sense of passion or urgency. I'm OK with no-drama-Obama about a host of issues; but about this, I expect him to express genuine outrage.
More important, I expect action. He and his administration are still allowing BP to report about what is happening (mainly lying about the extent of the gusher and what they have done to contain it--they are covering their corporate asses since massive liability suits are looming) and are standing passively by while BP tries to deal with the catastrophe.
If George Bush failed to act expeditiously and effectively when Katrina struck, Obama is doing even worse about a much more perilous situation. I suspect that he will pay a similar political price.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:53 AM
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