The Failure of Success
Oil, oil everywhere and not an end of it in sight. As the two campaigns – one to stop the flow and the other to mitigate the environmental disaster – are in high gear, there are several aspects to the story that are going to have significant ramifications for years to come.
First, let’s observe that this explosion and oil leak is one of those events of the sort that upset prognostications; kinda like knocking over a glass of beer, an act of god, so to speak, that will dramatically affect the realms of politics and energy and the environment. All of those projections of how the elections will go this November and the next are now, if you will, polluted. As are plans for more oil drilling. And for fishing off the shores of Louisiana any time soon.
Second, the blame game is already going full tilt. Of course, BP is lapping up responsibility as fast as it can, promising to make everyone whole, something that even the $100 million they’ve already committed won’t likely accomplish. They’re in trouble because the accident that happened was one that they assured everyone wouldn’t, nearly couldn’t, but did.
Also getting an evil eye are government folks who dawdled – strains of New Orleans five years ago – in realizing the danger and moving on it. Janet Napolitano is again showing herself to be under-qualified to manage homeland security, and there are questions about how quickly the Coast Guard, which has direct responsibility for such matters, questioned BP’s ability to manage the crisis.
Actually, no one may know how to fix the problem. The source, a mile under water, is gushing thousands of barrels of "harsh" crude a day and no one knows how to make it stop.
The bottom line is that we shouldn’t be risking such results. Solar power is the obvious solution. Perhaps this grotesque mistake will wake up President Obama to the realities of our needs.
©2010 SetonnoteS
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