Two Things: Portents of an Oil Torrent
by C. L. Cook
The 35 day-old environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico reveals two uncomfortable and ugly truths about the way our modern society is organized and its certain destination, should things remain the same.

 

But then, Tony is paid to put the best face on his company British Petroleum, or "Beyond Petroleum" as its greenwashing public relations campaign of some stale years ago would have you think of them. Today, Beyond Pathetic is one apt sobriquet; Beyond Prosecution another too fitting to be funny synonym.

When the United States Environmental Protection Agency, (EPA) concerned about its scientist's warnings of the possible ecological consequences of dumping millions of litres of dispersants on top of the millions of barrels of oil in the Gulf, ordered BP to stop using Corexit 9527A, (the BP-subsidiary produced "dispersant" already banned in BP's home country, Britain and not allowed throughout the North Sea) in favour of less toxic dispersants, BP said in not so many words; "Go screw yourself; we'll do what we want."

And "screw themselves" the EPA did; screwing with themselves too the vital Gulf ecosystem, and all who depend on it. A dazzling backdown of the appointed protectors of America's (not to mention neighbour Mexico and the Caribbean nations') environment to the perpetrator of what is now being called the worst human engineered ecological disaster ever.

 

But there's more.

As the Bush administration's EPA head, Christine Todd Whitman issued the safety 'all-clear' for Ground Zero in 2001, condemning untold numbers of rescue and clean-up workers to unspecified health horrors, this EPA is OK with clean-up workers, many commercial and charter fishers, hoping to salvage something from what looks like the beginning of the end of their vocation in the Gulf, wading into the toxic muck unprotected.

 

 

OSHA, the federal department responsible for worker health and safety, is so far OK too with BP acting as paymaster for efforts to clean up the toxic mess, even when they refuse to provide safety equipment mandated by law. Not only is BP willing to tell the EPA and OSHA to get stuffed, they are confident enough to threaten with firing workers with the temerity to wear respirators as they dollop up the noxious chemical soup.

Appearing on the news program, Democracy Now, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, Clint Guidry, referring to the continued use of Corexit, asked; "Why are they [BP] trying to kill my fishermen?"

When asked why BP would not allow respirators be used in the obviously toxic environment, Guidry related the situation in the Gulf with the Exxon Valdez clean-up in Alaska twenty years ago, where he said the extent of the health risks posed to workers through exposure were minimized. Already, nearly a dozen fishers working on the spill have been hospitalized for respiratory reactions to the oil and chemicals, with many more expected.

You Can Smell it from Venice

On the same broadcast, Albert Huang, an environmental justice attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, suggested BP's thinking behind the respirator ban was a case of "if you don't act like there's a problem, there's no problem." And, that's the nub of the greater problem. What has been actively ignored by industry, business, government, media, and the larger public is the too late to stay the same nature of the human societal paradigm.

 

We just can't seem to smell the coffee.

Rather than acknowledge the diminishing supplies of easily accessible oil resources and the need to search for and develop alternative energy, status quo corporate forces, and by extension governments, are determined to stay the current petroleum course, seeking and digging deeper into the earth and into the seas, more eager to preserve sharesholders' value than the world we all must share.

 

For them, it's just business.

And business is what "Tiny" Tony Hayward knows best. The reason he can comfortably toss off OSHA, the MMS, the EPA, and the president of the U.S.A. is because they don't matter.

 

 

All will bow before Big Oil; even Obama. And, it is this obiesance to power that gives truth to Rush Limbaugh's arch observation that the Deepwater Horizon is Obama's Katrina.

Though the Obama administration has tut tutted BP, and made gas about moratoriums on deep water drilling, behind the scenes the drilling goes on. More permits like the ones issued to the Deep Water Horizon have been issued for more deep wells. Despite polls overwhelmingly in favour of stopping calamitous kinds of energy exploration and development, governments and their friends in the oil businesses are still prospecting in the deep waters and distant landscapes, making certain another great ecocide.

It is more than unreasonable to accept the destruction of the environment on this scale; it is insane. It is more than unconscionable to accept workers being sent into a toxic environment without protection; it is illegal. It is more than laughable to expect the Obama administration to serve any better the people than did its corporate-coddling predecessor; it is ludicrous.