environment: Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling Time Magazine
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 5, Day 3: Sometimes I Hate Writing These Letters
Time Magazine also has a piece on the oil disaster, so they get another version of the letter I sent to Newsweek.
One good thing about a disaster — everybody covers it, so I have no problem finding a hook for a letter.
Frankly, I’d just as soon have to look for hours to find something worth writing about. The latest projections suggest that the Deepwater Horizon spill is going to dwarf the Valdez in another couple of days. Horrible.
The list of recent disasters attendant on fossil fuels is profoundly depressing: a Chinese coal ship fouling the Great Barrier Reef; a mine explosion in West Virginia; the Deepwater Horizon, pouring oil into the Gulf of Mexico at accelerating rates, with some projections describing flow equivalent to an Exxon Valdez every two days. And where is that oil coming from? Almost a mile underwater — too deep for divers. The results of this monumental corporate irresponsibility are beyond catastrophic; the Gulf of Mexico will be a petro-Chernobyl for decades to come. Communities and ecosystems are devastated; oyster beds that provided steadily for over a century are already lost. Towns and businesses that depend on fishing are facing death sentences. What will we learn from our latest catastrophe? If we are lucky, we will finally understand that fossil energy is anything but cheap, and that our collective survival depends on getting off our destructive addiction to oil and coal as soon as possible. BP, alas, must now stand for “Broken Planet.”
Warren Senders
environment: Deepwater Horizon hubris offshore drilling
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 5, Day 2: We Don’t Need No Education
More on the Deepwater Horizon. This one goes to Newsweek, which has an article on how the spill is going to affect the future of offshore drilling.
The fate of hundreds of communities and multiple ecosystems now hangs in the balance as a toxic oil slick begins to wash up on the coastlines of Louisiana and Florida. The Deepwater Horizon spill is both a crisis of terrifying proportions and a testament to human folly and hubris.
The crucial question is, “What will we learn from this disaster?” Will we learn that we need to wean ourselves from oil as rapidly as possible — or will we learn that communities and ecosystems are expendable? Will we learn that there is more energy to be saved through eliminating waste than there is to be found under the seabed — or will we learn that conservation (in the words of Dick Cheney) can “never be the basis of a sound energy policy”? Will we learn that when we include the costs of cleaning up spills and mitigating the worst effects of climate change, oil is not cheap, but horribly expensive?
We can no longer afford disasters of this magnitude. How many more Deepwater Horizons will it take before we learn that we’re better off leaving that oil in the Earth, and moving to a renewable-energy economy?
Warren Senders
environment: acoustic switch Deepwater Horizon Dick Cheney vileness Voldemort
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 5, Day 1: Writing to Lord Voldemort
The Deepwater Horizon would never have happened, if there had been an “acoustic switch” installed. Why wasn’t there such a switch? Because federal laws requiring them were nullified early in the Bush/Cheney administration. By guess who?
I have never been more frightened to write a letter than I am at this moment.
UPDATE: There is NO CONTACT INFORMATION AVAILABLE for Dick Cheney. Try googling “Dick Cheney Contact” and see for yourself. So I sent it to his wife, who is a “Senior Fellow” at the American Enterprise Institute (a wingnut welfare center).
Dear Mr. Cheney,
I imagine that as a big fan of environmental destruction, you’re probably relishing the news of the expanding disaster of the Deepwater Horizon platform. I assume also that you are savoring the knowledge that you played an integral part in laying the groundwork for the catastrophe.
Remember the secret meetings you had with the oil industry at the beginning of your first term as Secret President? Of course you do. And you probably remember the deregulation you devised that did away with the requirement for an acoustic switch to cut the flow of oil off at the source. A half-million dollars was surely too expensive, and nothing was going to happen anyway, so why worry?
That switch you decided your buddies didn’t need? It would have prevented this nightmare. Acoustic switches are required in off-shore drilling platforms in most of the world, except, of course, for the United States.
Mr. Cheney, the environmental and economic disaster our nation is now facing is one that can be laid at your feet. If you had a moral bone in your body, you’d be out there on the coastline right now, helping with the cleanup.
I remember way back when you said that “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.” A genuinely “sound and comprehensive” energy policy would include projected cleanup costs for oil disasters like the Deepwater Horizon — costs that would explode forever the myth that fossil fuels are “cheap.”
The damage you have done, sir, is incalculable. Because you wanted to spare your Big Oil buddies from having to buy a few switches, we are now facing what’s likely to be the worst oil spill in history, with costs estimated in the hundreds of millions.
This must be a very special and proud moment for you. Savor it.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: Barack Obama Deepwater Horizon Katrina Louisiana oil spill
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Month 4, Day 30: How Much Worse Can Things Get?
The Deepwater Horizon is an overwhelming tragedy, made worse by corporate attempts at a coverup, and with compounded irony from President Obama’s remarks a few days before it happened.
Dear President Obama,
It was surely unfortunate timing when you remarked (at a town hall meeting in South Carolina) on April 2nd that “…oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced.” Well, maybe, but in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster we can see that the result of all that “technical advancement” is a catastrophe that is now likely to eclipse the Exxon Valdez spill in every respect.
You also said that, “Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs; they came from the refineries onshore.” Oh, how I wish this were true. But, alas, the facts are different: hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused 124 offshore spills, totaling almost a million gallons of oil released into the ocean. 554,400 gallons were crude oil and condensate from platforms, rigs and pipelines, and 189,000 gallons were refined products from platforms and rigs. The largest of these was 152,250 gallons, well over the 100,000 gallon threshold considered a “major spill.”
But corrections aside, the Deepwater Horizon qualifies as an environmental crisis of terrifying proportions. Kerry St. Pe, the former head of Louisiana’s oil spill response team, says, “This isn’t a storage tank or a ship with a finite amount of oil that has boundaries. This is much, much worse.” Much worse, indeed. It’s not a “spill,” it’s a river of oil flowing from the bottom of the Gulf at the rate of 210,000 gallons a day. Some officials say it could be running for months. If that prediction holds, the coastline of Louisiana will become a disaster area that hasn’t been seen in the United States since the Exxon Valdez.
If this doesn’t convince you that offshore drilling is a succession of disasters waiting to happen, what will? The Deepwater Horizon offers further proof that the only way to avoid oil spills is to leave it in the earth. We do need renewable energy, and we don’t need to dump millions of gallons of crude oil over some of the most delicate and valuable ecosystems in the country.
Please reconsider your support for this aspect of your energy program.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders