Deep Water

Like many others who voted for Barack Obama I was disappointed by his Oval Office speech on the Gulf oil spill. Where was the anger that was and still is overdue? What particularly upset me was his saying that a commission would be set up to determine the size of compensation owed by BP. I was mollified somewhat the next day on learning that $20 billion was being put in escrow for this purpose although I question this amount being sufficient in the long run. The loss of a year’s earnings is one thing, the loss of a career a more costly other,

The initial impact of the spill on the public was considerably less traumatic than Pearl Harbor or 9/11 because its consequences were not immediately evident. On April 21 relatively few Americans realized the enormity of the previous day’s event. While I hesitate to quote myself, I wrote two weeks after the spill that the public was more interested in what didn’t happen in Times Square, but might have, than what was, and still is, happening on the floor of the Gulf.

I’m sorry to say that my estimation of Obama’s leadership has declined because of his handing this crisis. Still there is little he could have done that would have made things better today. Nobody in authority seems to have any idea how to cap the well. Until and unless this is done, containment of the spill is an exercise in futility. Claims to the contrary notwithstanding, I don’t believe that oil can be retrieved at the ocean’s surface at anything like the rate at which it’s coming from the floor.

It’s unfortunate that the offending corporation has a British name and predominantly British ownership, lending a potentially misleading xenophobic context to public reaction. It’s my educated guess, the “education” based solely on what I’ve observed in the years I’ve lived, that this kind of accident could have happened as easily to any of the companies now drilling deep in our waters. Their manuals dealing with this sort of disaster are virtual copies, down to concern for the Gulf wildlife which includes walruses.

We know how to deal with “foreign” enemies. The day after Pearl Harbor FDR and Congress declared war on Japan. Bush’s response to 9/11 was to bomb and invade Afghanistan. But we don’t know how to handle corporate enemies. Their thievery is more akin to the method of burglars than the figurative armed robberies carried out by the perpetrators of Pearl Harbor and 9/11. The damage this time has been more to property than human life, which should get the attention of Republicans, who tend to put a relatively high value on property.

There is a division in the nation over the need for governmental regulation of business in general which tends to fall along party lines. I favor more of it in all the areas in which I’m informed. But simple logic dictates that the need for it in one field does not by itself apply in others. That said, the Gulf oil spill by itself with a bit of luck should do to the case for self regulation of deep water oil drilling what Pearl Harbor did to isolationism.