As noted in an earlier post, I am especially disgusted with the "Drill, Baby, Drill" crowd. They demand the reduction in size of government, they demand decreasing regulations, they demonize those who'd support reasonable regulations and demonize them as anti-American communists.
BUT, as soon as the inevitable happens, THEN they complain loud and large that "the President is doing enough to make things right."
There is a special debt owed by the "Drill, Baby, Drill" crowd and yet, we're all going to have to pay that debt.
Having said that, I am not of the crowd that is demanding that Obama "do something." I'm not of the crowd that says that I want to see Obama "get mad" and kick ass at BP. There certainly is a time for anger and for action, but that time was long ago.
Yes, yes, we should be doing all we can do to responsibly deal with this leak. BUT, that does not mean we should be just doing anything for the sake of doing something. I've heard some people criticizing Obama for not burning more oil off, for not using more toxic dispersant to spread out the oil, for not more hurriedly building sand berms, for instance.
Each of these are untested "solutions" to this problem. It is irresponsible to drill for oil offshore and it would be adding irresponsibility to irresponsibility to just throw ANY old solution at it, unknown and untested.
The time for working out solutions was BEFORE we started drilling offshore, not after the fact. The time for anger was when we started (well before THIS president) letting oil companies drill offshore in our fragile environment.
What I want to hear from Obama is that this offshore drilling is suspended. That mountaintop removal permits are suspended. That dangerous and untested "solutions" to our energy problems are not allowed without due diligence.
Mostly, I'm angry at myself. At all of us.
It is our lust for cheap fossil fuels made easy for us that has allowed oil and coal companies get rich and be able to influence policy wrongly, that has placed pressure on our leaders to do just what Obama and Bush before him and Clinton before him and Reaganbush before him have done and ease regulations instead of increase oversight reasonably.
We can "generate" more energy than we can find offshore by simply living more responsibly. Drive less. Quit buying plastic stuff. Consume less. Turn down the AC and heat. Dress appropriately for the season. I believe that our largest source of energy is through simple conservation. AND, it has the benefit of not potentially (eventually, inevitably) harming/ruining our oceans and air and millions of lives.
So, the action that I most want to see our president and leaders begin doing is stop caving in to the demand for cheap energy. Coal and oil and nuclear (God forbid) have REAL costs that we've been covering up for too long. I don't want to see Obama get angry, necessarily. I want to hear him speak hard truths and call for us to begin live more responsibly.
That's what I'm wanting to hear.
That's what we need to be clamoring for.
19 comments:
Do you even know why BP was drilling in the deep sea?
If this happened in shallow waters or on land it wouldn't even be an issue. We proved in Iraq that we can fix a broken oil well we just can't do it a mile under water.
Before you even answer its not because we are running out of oil on land and in shallow water, thats a fiction you cling to.
The answer is environmentalists purposely made it more difficult for companies to drill for oil they essentially pushed oil companies into the deep seas. For those keeping score the environuts have:
- killed (and are killing) 2.7 million a year with the DDT ban (mostly babies so from a liberal viewpoint thats ok)
- prevented the N.O. levies from being rebuilt (wetland project circa 1970s I think)
- prevented the use of asbestos fireproofing in the world trade center
- banned controlled burning in western states ($8 million a day battling natural uncontrolled burns)
- turned the Gulf into a disgusting soupy mess that can't sustain life.
Well thats about all I can think about off the top of my head. Obamas terrible leadership as shown through his looking for an ass to kick instead of looking for a solution isn't all that great either.
People who think the government should stop the leak simply have no idea what they're talking about.
Our government does not drill for oil. It doesn't have drills, it doesn't have the ships, it doesn't have the experts. We leave that to private industry, which is at the moment doing a terrible job.
It isn't clear to me what, exactly, people want the government to do right now.
It isn't like Obama had a almost a week to send buses to evacuate people from an oncoming hurricane, and didn't do it, for example. *ahem*
And, of course, if Obama had the government take over, then the very same folks who are screaming now would scream because he's taken over private industry.
It's important to separate the very real concerns here from political posturing and the unimaginable callousness from the right who couldn't care less about real people's lives being affected right now and are only looking to try to score cheap political points while they simultaneously try to defend their good buddies in big oil
Obama was political posturing from day one with the "Its BPs fault" statement. Because the government doesn't employ oil experts doesn't mean they can't consult experts. For Obama a good place to start would have been to gather the best and brightest engineers in the fields of remote vehicles, physics, oil and maybe some chemists. Instead he sent lawyers.
After forming a team of subject matter experts Obama could have met with BPs experts and local state officials and defined the scope of the problem and devised a plan of attack in all the areas that would be affected.
Comparing this to Katrina doesn't really work since Katrina became a disaster only after local and state governments failed to do their job. Florida Mississippi and Alabama didn't need evacuation assistance.
The oil spill is a failure of BP on the prevention side and the Federal Government on the reaction side and compliance side.
My theory is Obama didn't even want to try to fix this because he feared the political ramifications of failure far more than he feared the environmental ramifications in the gulf, and it didn't fit into his busy social schedule.
And your evidence that the government has not consulted with BP and other oil companies is what, exactly? Oh right...you're the one who doesn't ever provide evidence for any statements. Probably because you're too busy looking for pictures from gay pride parades on the net. LOL
"Comparing this to Katrina doesn't really work since Katrina became a disaster only after local and state governments failed to do their job. "
Actually we have these great things called satellites now which allow us to do things like predict the weather. Meteorologists knew in plenty of time what was going to happen in order to get buses to N.O. to start evacuations. Nice revisionist history and I'm sure it convinces your cronies, but not anyone who was paying attention.
"My theory is Obama didn't even want to try to fix this"
Yes, and Bush caused 9/11. ROFL.
BUT, as soon as the inevitable happens, THEN they complain loud and large that "the President is doing enough to make things right."
Yes, some voices on the Right have been quite contradictory. They want smaller government, but when Obama does nothing in response to a problem, they get upset at him.
They want Obama to show some anger for once, but when he does, they get upset at him.
He can't win.
Dan wrote:
We can "generate" more energy than we can find offshore by simply living more responsibly. Drive less. Quit buying plastic stuff. Consume less. Turn down the AC and heat. Dress appropriately for the season. I believe that our largest source of energy is through simple conservation. AND, it has the benefit of not potentially (eventually, inevitably) harming/ruining our oceans and air and millions of lives.
As much as offshore oil drilling has proven to be seriously flawed, I disagree with this approach. It suggests that the problem is that we're too wealthy, too prosperous; we have too much energy.
Not at all. We need cheaper energy to benefit, above anyone else, the poorest in our land who lack abundant electricity. The more energy we can produce, the cheaper it gets, and the poor get more energy.
Now when there is fluidity of content, such as groundwater or air, we need government regulation to prevent people from harming others. We should be careful about expanding energy extraction, as this spill demonstrates. But then we should drill more on land (where spills are far less risky), and build wind farms, solar farms, hydroelectric plants, and nuclear power plants.
To benefit the poorest of our land, we should have the cheapest energy possible.
"And your evidence that the government has not consulted with BP and other oil companies is what, exactly?"
Alan you asking me for evidence to support a negative; you're a retard
I'm not asking you to "prove" a negative. I'm asking for evidence to prove your assertion that the government has not consulted with experts. Should be easy enough to find some made-up report on WingNutDaily or some such.
As always Eddie makes assertions with no evidence to back them up.
Edwin is right. It's all the fault of environmentalists who demand we actually not destroy our planet. It's the fault of liberals who demand that we treat one another and our planet with respect. It is the fault of the President of the United States because, after all, well, he's President.
See, doesn't that make sense?
No?
Well, you all have been drinking the Obama Kool-Aid too long to understand simple logic.
Straw men. One and all.
All kidding aside, from my friend Jim's website: "The Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent gushing of oil and toxic dispersants are entirely man-made disasters. While Katrina had grave regional implications, the current disaster has global implications that cut to the heart of energy, ecology, and economics."
GKS, I'm not saying you guys don't WANT to help the planet the poor whatever. You guys just really really suck at it. Every time liberals want to change things for the better the result is always the same, unintended consequences make things worse. Liberals didn't want BP to drill on land or in shallow water so they forced them into risky deepwater drilling, now we 60 million gallons of oil in the gulf.
And I also don't want to see you kill any children, Edwin so, by your logic, if you go and kill adults, it's MY fault??
Do you truly not realize how utterly inane your reasoning is and how obviously, baldly partisan and blindly self-serving it is?
Tell us, Edwin, what would you like Obama to have done?
"Every time liberals want to change things for the better the result is always the same, unintended consequences make things worse"
Yeah. He's right. Social security. Civil rights. Reasonable work hours. And end to child labor. Child immunization. The work to eradicate terrible illnesses such as small pox, polio, etc. National parks. Minimum wage. Rural electrification. The GI Bill. Peace Corps. Women's suffrage.
Um .... The end of prohibition. Heh.
All things that the busybodies, fusspots, tattletales, and scolds who call themselves conservatives blocked at every opportunity, shrieking about the end of the world.
Boy, he's right, we liberals have screwed everything up. And all it took was some anonymous wingnut with a computer to write a comment on a blog to convince me.
As always, Alan, excellent points.
Edwin, "you're a retard?" Really? What are you, in 8th grade?
Clean up the language. That's one of those epithets that I won't suffer lightly.
Been busy, still playing catch up, but thanks everyone (else) for the thoughtful comments.
Re: Edwin, "you're a retard?" Really? What are you, in 8th grade?
With apologies to all 8th graders out there. My daughter's just finished 8th grade and she knows better.
Edwin...
Before you even answer its not because we are running out of oil on land and in shallow water, thats a fiction you cling to.
Oh, really? There is an infinite supply of fossil fuels on land? I guess if you can lay your hands on that infinite supply (ie, "not running out"), you'll soon be a rich man, Edwin.
Silly me, I thought ALL non-renewable resources on earth were running out, you know, physics and all.
Edwin...
Obama was political posturing from day one with the "Its BPs fault" statement.
So, BP was drilling for oil, BP (and other oil companies) have lobbied to decrease gov't oversight and to get permission to access OUR oil (it doesn't belong to BP, they're leasing the opportunity to access it from us), and BP's people had this explosion and leak of oil and BP had no workable solutions for this sort of scenario.
How then, exactly, is Obama wrong in suggesting this is BP's fault? Or is his fault not in the statement (which, after all, is only factual), but in his "posturing?"
While Dan and Alan have disposed of much of your lunacy, Edwin, I have to admire you for actually typing the phrase "unintended consequences", as if that actually meant something.
See, here's the thing about "unintended consequences". They always happen. Back when Pres. Bush started pushing his "ownership society" in 2002, and urged greater opportunity for Americans to own their own homes (as if that were actually something that had to do with being American), the banks sat up, took notice, and started the great shuffle-game that finally collapsed, first in slo-mo then completely between 2007 and 2008. That was not so much an unintended consequence, predicted as early as 2004 by several liberal economists and commentators who understood the entire thing was a house of cards.
As for the BP business, I have to ask if the deregulation of the oil industry, the cozy relationship between the Bush Administration and Big Oil, the refusal of Congress to do its job passing laws and holding hearings on their efficacy under Republican leadership led to the unintended consequence of this huge disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
The problem with mindless typing of points made by others is there are people out here in the real world who understand that they are meaningless, Edwin. It might be an opportunity for you to educate yourself, think for yourself, and consider that you might actually not know what you're talking about.
BTW - Alan, my sister was a Peace Corps volunteer (Cameroon, 1980-1982), and I can tell anyone interested that, without question, that program is a dismal failure. ALl she did was teach a village in the north of the country how to farm fish, and use the water to better irrigate their crops. Oh, and to keep poisonous snakes from stealing the chickens that everyone in her town seemed to have. I mean, how silly of my liberal sister to think she might actually help some folk make their lives a little better!
Geoffrey: What a waste of time. Think of the money she'd have made by going to work for BP for those years!
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