The Tragedy of Managed Expectations in the Gulf

[seafan]

Alan Farago, conservation chair of Friends of the Everglades writes:


May 19, 2010

.....

NOAA, a science agency of the US government with a mission tied to the US Department of Commerce, has a major presence in the Gulf and the Florida Keys. If you were to put a dollar amount to its budget for enforcement of laws protecting natural resources, and if you were to guess that it is practically nothing, and if you were to imagine that enforcement authority has been largely off-loaded to the states and in the case of Florida that, furthermore, local and state politics have ensured that budgets for agencies charged with environmental enforcement have been thoroughly strangled and eviscerated under Republican legislative majorities, you would be right. You would also be right to question whether the underlying premise of extremist Republican politics is a certainty in hopelessness.

Yesterday Interior Secretary Ken Salazar faced an outraged Congress; a Congress that performed even more poorly supporting laws and budgets for enforcement of environmental regulations than it did in protecting the US Treasury from predators. Of the MInerals Management Service-- the agency responsible for monitoring offshore drilling activities--Salazar "said that the majority of the agency’s 1,700 employees were honest and capable but that there remained “a few bad apples”. Neither Salazar nor the Congressmen were inclined to revisit the "sex-for-oil" scandal that erupted at the same agency in 2008. Salazar said that anyone found guilty of negligence or corruption would be rooted out. (Federal Agency Chief Admits Lapses in Gulf Oil Spill, NY Times, May 18, 2010) The question remains: how could President Barack Obama, he of the grass roots organizing background, he of the spirit of empowerment of the weak, he of the Harvard Law School, how could this president fail to purge from federal agencies the ideologues who had hijacked their mission on behalf of special interests under the lazy eye of Bill Clinton, the triangulator, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney whose White House closed the doors behind Big Oil from very nearly their first day in office?

.....

The truth of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe has been leaking out for weeks: that Congress is in business to defend polluters; that the wealthiest nation on earth, with the most advanced regulatory system in the free world meant to protect public health and the environment, cannot meet its own goals and obligations under federal laws because of insider dealing and the revolving door between the regulated and regulators, ensuring lucrative sinecures so long as regulatory vessels are more preoccupied with bailing out and defending budgets and authority from attacks, than actually protecting against industry’s excesses.

So it is that environmentalists and government skeptics are all in the same boat--without oars or engine--drifting on the Gulf Loop current along with tens of millions of gallons of spilled oil; we're waiting to see what happens. Only a few dozen tar balls have washed up in Key West. Yesterday I heard a news report that 187 birds and sea mammals had died as a result of the spill. The web is providing some very effective ways to measure the damage, which according to the top BP executive will be minimal. This is what it feels like to drift off to war.

.....

If any president has a "true north"-- take away all the prerequisites of office, the cocoon of presidential privilege and power--if any president has the capacity to feel the moral outrage; not just of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe but of the global consequences of climate change, Barack Obama should. And what his outrage should tell him is that the time for federal authority to stop playing fast and loose with environmental policies and laws. Deepwater Horizon magnifies the urgency. There is a good reason that BP has been allowed by the federal government and agencies to run the show in the Gulf of Mexico. Government, with failure built into its operation and capacity, has been infested with fear, paranoia, careerism and padded with inefficiency for so long, and pushed down by industry and the wages of lobbyists, that the question arises: who is there to make decisions except by committee, except by waffling. Is there anyone willing to pick up the lance and sword and lead? Or, is the battle we are observing, simply to be the last man standing?

Florida is praying for some miracles now.


What we need once more is the fine vision, the heart and the love of our world, as given to Florida by Marjory Stoneman Douglas. God only knows when we will ever again see this caliber of strength and courage from those in our leadership.






"It's not too late or we wouldn't be working. We simply cannot let everything be destroyed. We can't do that, not if we want water. We've got to take care of what we have."

-- Marjory Stoneman Douglas, 1990

[flamingdem]

1. Aiming at Obama seems a bit too late don't you think?

There are more worthwhile targets..

[BeFree]

2. The last man standing

King of the hill.

And all us peons downslope just praying for them to throw us a scrap. A bone. Trickle down on us, we beg of you, Please.

We have progressed to a point where we will never again share in what was, at one time, our birthright. The birthright to clean waters, and a bountiful and fecund world of more riches than any one company could corral or destroy.

We've gone beyond what was once just a wild nightmarish dream.
We have screwed the pooch, and he is us.

Goodbye, and thanks for the fish. The fish were wonderful, but now they are history. Sorry, but they have been stolen from you kids. And that is the sin.

[Autumn]

3. It's tragic, and all too true

and I hope to God, Obama says NO MORE.

[Angry Dragon]

6. I do not know if he has the b____ for it

[Catherina]

4. We're up to scientific estimates of 95,000 barrels a day now

95,000 barrels a day!


and BP is still lying through its teeth saying it's 5000 a day

BP said it is now siphoning about 3,000 barrels (126,000 gallons/477,000 liters) a day of oil, out of what the company estimated was a 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) a day gusher.


http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6430AR20100519

When the first illegal immigrants came to this country, there were salmon fishing in every stream, fowl everywhere, a real land of riches with lakes pure and blue.

Now look at it.

We've raped and pilliaged the land. These bastards had NO right drilling that far down. They've opened Pandora's box and no one will do anything about it.

[BeFree]

5. I met Alan, once, long ago

Glad to see he's still in the fight. And he wrote this damn fine piece to boot.

Marjory must be proud of Alan.