The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has produced at least one piece of positive news; the finger nails on chalkboard screech of 'Drill Baby Drill' seems to have been eliminated from the political rallies of the upcoming dirt-slinging season.
Sadly, that appears to be the end of the good news as best case scenarios now include spraying the gulf waters with a chemical variation of Agent Orange (so toxic it is banned in the UK), a Hail Mary attempt to plug the leak and an estimated 185,000 to 7.7 million barrels of oil desecrating the coastline of the southern United States.
It is, as they say, a pretty Bad Deal.
But what happened? What is happening and what does the future hold?
The facts are nearly as murky as the dark stained sludge which now coats the wings of the Louisiana State Bird. This much we know; on April 20 at 11pm an explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon, an exploratory, deep water oil rig 52 miles off the coast of Louisiana. The resulting fire killed eleven people and unleashed a gaping hole some 5000 feet below the surface from which crude oil is now gushing at a rate of 5,000-210,000 barrels per day, every day, for what could be the rest of our lives.
The Gulf of Mexico, as we remember it, may be no more.
British Petroleum, the London based company which leased the rig from Transocean, bears the weight of the responsibility but we will uncover more than enough scapegoats within the confines of the courtroom in the decade to come. Blame, at present, is not our primary concern.
Containing the leak, cleaning the mess and implementing changes to ensure this cannot happen again are where our attentions must now be focused. And this will challenge us to our collective core because greed, impatience and inattention are traits which have plagued humanity from the moment we emerged from the caves.
It is slowly being revealed that the Deepwater Horizon suffered from colossal oversights in regards to the proper methods for extracting oil from beneath the earth, whether that that extraction was taking place on land, off shore or, in this case, far off shore. And since the expenses incurred during this difficult process are staggering, BP was on the hook for one million dollars per day to lease the rig, the motivation to exceed established goals was, to say the least, extreme.
The rig was behind schedule, which, to any sane Capitalist, means it was losing money. Hours before the rig exploded a team of BP executives visited the site and, finding the results lacking, encouraged the pace of drilling to be increased. This resulted in the removal of heavy drilling fluid from the underwater pipes and replacing it with seawater, the final nail in a coffin which was set afloat months, perhaps years, perhaps generations ago. A methane bubble of gas gurgled through the line, ignited upon some unknown trigger and sent a fireball into the Gulf night. Two days later the rig quivered, then toppled into the ocean and the oil continued to spurt at an alarming rate from the broken 21 inch pipe.
Our attention was diverted due to our inability to comprehend what was happening so far off shore. Out of sight, out of mind. And the initial projections seemed to alleviate our fears. It wasn't so bad, those who were supposed to know kept saying.
38 days later it's no longer out of sight. And most assuredly, it will not be of mind for many, many years to come. Human error abounds throughout this colossal disaster which has the potential to make Hurricane Katrina look like a mid-summer rain shower if we are unable to implement a solution.
The anger which is brewing along the Gulf Coast threatens not only the existence of the world's third largest oil company but the multi-layered bureaucracy of the federal government and perhaps, even, the presidency of one Barrack Hussein Obama.
There is an invasion occurring along our southern shores by a relentless force which knows no mercy, bears no feelings and will not be stopped unless action is inflicted on a mammoth scale.
And as this attack happens we have placed our security in the hands of a foreign company which dictates to us what will be done, how it will be done and who will do it.
America's chickens, as the fiery Reverend Wright predicted, have finally come home to roost.
We're 38 days in at this point and every card in the deck is in the hands of a company with a financial stake on how the disaster is perceived, not on how it is resolved. BP would very much like to have the images of an oil slicked ocean surface removed from the nightly news. It is for this reason they are inundating the gulf waters with a chemical toxin banned in their own country. This chemical, applied by our own Coast Guard, might very well 'disperse' the crude oil from the surface but what then of the oil as it sinks a mere fifty feet below it? Out of sight, out of mind?
What happens in ten years when Gulf Coast shrimp becomes a cancer causing carcinogen far more lethal than cigarettes?
Oh, I forgot. We'll all have government sponsored health care by then.
The very same government ineptitude which failed in the aftermath of Katrina now seats a thousand at shore-side tents for daily buffets while the marshy wetlands on the outer perimeter of the gulf are being overrun by the relentless sludge of our latest enemy.
Where is the action? Who owns the back-up plan? Why, when the enemy is storming the gates, must we seek permission to defend ourselves?
Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has pleaded with the federal authorities for over a month for the green light to enact a dredging operation which might protect the wetlands. His calls to Washington go directly to voicemail.
Shrimpers all along the coastline, with boats able to tote slick-stopping booms, have begged to join the fight. BP turns a blind eye, the Coast Guard deflects requests to another authority and the man with unlimited miles on Air Force One says we won't rest until the situation is resolved, yet still finds time to stump for campaign contributions in California and won't post-pone a weekend holiday in Chicago.
"Enjoy the carnival." Nero said while Rome burned.
The Untited States of America is the greatest nation on Earth. We will prove this once again in the years following this desecration upon our land and our people. We have placed enormous responsibilities upon our government. In exchange for this we funnel tax dollars to DC which far exceed the return on our investment. We give power to those we elect because we expect government to be our protector when we cannot protect ourselves. When the very responsibility of government is so blatantly disrespected the people will once again rise against.
We elected this president on a platform of change and in turn we get Katrina on steroids. We elected a leader and got a community organizer with a silver tongue. Washington drives our limos, flies our jets and dines on our dime and in doing so has neglected a simple reality.
These are our waters, our shoreline, our borders, our money and this is our country.
We now enter a time when we begin to take it back.
