Commentary
What if the oil spill is a symptom of something bigger?
by Gordon C. StewartA bleeding mole on one's neck sends shivers down the spine. It could be benign. It could be pre-cancerous. It could be pre-cancerous but self-contained. Or it could be evidence of a full-body systemic skin cancer. It takes a dermatologist and a pathology report to diagnose.
We can see the brown pelicans and sea turtles washed up on the Gulf coast, the marshes and the wetlands on which the food chain depends, the angry geyser a mile below the ocean's surface. It is possible, after five long weeks, that progress is being made to plug that geyser. We should not confuse that possible progress with a cure.
Beyond the obvious question of who's responsible, I see bigger questions I don't know how to answer.
Whom do we trust?
Those who are supposed to know such things -- the equivalent of dermatologists and pathologists in the Department of Interior's Minerals Management Services, and the oil companies that drill the wells -- have not earned our trust. They are on public record as having committed malpractice. The head of the MMS has resigned, but one bureaucrat's departure does not change that record.
Does our government have the capability to raise tough questions and to regulate the private corporations on which our petroleum-dependent economy depends?
The Wall Street Journal reported that the regulatory agency, MMS, had once considered requiring a backup shutoff device -- in addition to the primary blowout preventer -- called an acoustic switch. When the industry argued against having to adopt the $500,000 device, MMS backed down and said the device was "not recommended because they tend to be very costly."
The Journal later reported that MMS commissioned a researcher to study the reliability of blowout preventers. In 2002, the researcher recommended that the devices include a second "ram shear" to close off the pipe, in case the first didn't work, but MMS ignored the recommendation.
Had the Minerals Management Service and BP been schooled on the 14th century nursery rhyme "For Want of a Nail" that taught English children to pay attention to first things, the Gulf, the marshes and the wetlands might still be blue.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
The rhyme dates back to 1363, when King Edward III instituted obligatory nationwide archery practice on Sundays and holidays to ensure the nation's security. He seems to have understood that a well-prepared people, not just an army, was the best defense, and it all began with paying attention to the first step in any battle: a nail in the horse's hoof.
We don't have a king. We have a president and a Congress and government agencies responsible for the nation's security and wellbeing. The Interior Department's own inspector general sounded the alarm in 2008 when he reported that Minerals Management Services officials had accepted cocaine, sex and other gifts provided by the oil companies they were responsible for regulating. Thursday's Washington Post confirms that close ties between the regulators and those they were regulating were routine. While we were sending today's versions of horses and riders off to battle in Iraq and Afghanistan, we were losing the bigger battle with ourselves: the battle with greed and with private conglomerates of wealth and power.
The MMS officials have also decried the statute that requires them to respond to oil company applications for off-shore drilling within 30 days. President Obama singled that measure out for scorn in his press conference Thursday. Those who enacted the statute -- the voting members of Congress who depend upon campaign contributions from multinational corporations -- know there is no reasonable way MMS can do its job in 30 days.
What to do?
The licensing government agency and the companies responsible for the disaster cannot answer the larger questions. BP, Transoceanic and Halliburton can quibble over which company made the mistake in this one blow-out, and MMS can point to the statutes that limit its ability to review applications, but they cannot address whether this bleeding mole requires treatment -- whether it is a symptom of a deadly cancer.
For want of a valve, the rig was lost. For want of the rig, the sea was lost. For want of the sea, the kingdom was lost.
Yet if a poisoned sea can turn people's attention to the sickness that produced such horror, perhaps the kingdom will be saved.
----
The Rev. Gordon Stewart is pastor of the Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, Minn.
Comments (12)
Yea, greed is alive and well, far too many know the price of everything and the Value of nothing. A renewal of the Spirit, personal and National is necessary.
Well put! With foresight on the part of large corporations at a record low, and also in our government, with certain people yelping about taxes, not realizing the infrastructure is in deperate need of repair, I am reminded of another truism: A stitch in time saves nine.
I'm sure BP is even more active in the North Sea in the British and Norwegian oil industries. Obviously those governments have been able to require BP and others to use the blowout prevention systems that are available. I guess the U.S. oil industry, being much older and domestically based, has had 100 yrs. to gain control of our regulation system.
I think part of the blame rests with all of us. We are the ones who drive big cars with big engines, and drive boats with big motors. We demand that there be enough fuel to power them, and that it be as cheap as possible. At the same time there are those who want to make huge sums of money, much more than anybody needs, by selling these oil products. Then, because of this, we search for more oil to meet these demands, and really don't care where it comes from.
I think we have to figure out what we want. Do we really need to go zero to sixty miles per hour in six or seven seconds? Or is it necessary to have a two hundred horse power engine to go fishing?
A fisherperson can get to the favorite fishing spot with a ten horse power motor, and one can waterski just fine behind a sixty horse motor. We don't need all this excess! I think we need a clean planet to live on and fuel to keep us warm far more than these other things!
To Gordon C. Stewart: Thank you for your excellent thought provoking Commentary, regarding the oil spill. Those of us living on Florida's Gulf coast are closely following this story and are continuously outraged by the lack of government safety regulations and controls over private sector petroleum and off-shore oil drilling corportions. Heads should roll at the Dept. of Interior's Minerals Management Services and the gaping hole in our regulatory controls must also be capped! David Welsh, Tampa, Florida, May 28, 2010.
Thank you for your intelligent comments on this hideously overwhelming disaster. It is made more horrible with the revelation that the agencies responsible for overseeing these ventures betrayed us all by looking the other way and even more by taking from the very people they were supposed to regulate. Drilling at these extreme depths should have required extreme preventative measures to protect our natural resources and the lives of those who work on the offshore rigs. The blatant disregard for what was required is the worst kind of cruelty. That is the malignancy.
Mr. Stewart's OpEd piece nailed something we all knew a few generations ago: that evil is not just in the world and in 'systems,' but in us. Each choice we make leads us either in the direction of becoming a better, more just human being and so contributing to a better world, or in the direction of becoming a horror that is nudging the world closer to hellishness.
Thanks for the red flag!
Too bad the stooges for deregulation and corporate impunity don't sort according to party affiliation. There'll be plenty of seething over this mess by constituents of all persuasions, and not just along the gulf, when it's discovered that the fantastic profits of the oil adventurers will fall far short of remedy, and the costs will once again be externalized to taxpayers, not to mention the beleaguered marine ecosystems. Republicans may tend to cheer loudest for laissez-faire capitalism, but the Democrats have rolled over for it, and the voter despairs of finding any practical distinction in this regard. I sure miss Paul Wellstone, the face of the "democratic wing of the Democratic Party."
You capture so eloquently my feelings about the rampant greed throughout our country. I often ponder the difference between today's greed and that of yesterday...the "robber barrons" only one example of the unconscionable use of people and resources for the benefit of the few. Could it be that we are simply more aware of the travesties today because of improved communication or has the "disease" spread from the top down casting its net over the multitudes? Whatever the answer, we must find an answer quickly or the kingdom will surely be lost.
You capture so eloquently my feelings about the rampant greed throughout our country. I often ponder the difference between today's greed and that of yesterday...the "robber barrons" only one example of the unconscionable use of people and resources for the benefit of the few. Could it be that we are simply more aware of the travesties today because of improved communication or has the "disease" spread from the top down casting its net over the multitudes? Whatever the answer, we must find an answer quickly or the kingdom will surely be lost.
The oil spill in the Gulf presents us with a twofold opportunity, political and moral, that Rev. Stewart summarizes nicely. Politically, the spill is an ugly, potent icon of the ravenous appetite of the United States (and of the West generally) for black gold. THe problem is not our dependence on "foreign oil", as members of Congress so gingerly put it. It is our dependence on oil, period. As a number of the comments have said already, we are our own worst enemy. Today's oil industry is simply out in front of where we all say we want to go. Witness President Obama's contrite and really quite instructive news conference just days ago. True, collusion between government and the private sector is just a twisted and just as basic in the Gulf oil disaster as it was in the financial meltdown of 2008. But we know who the government is, just like we know who the private sector is. They are us.
Hello. I support consservation of all wildllife, and this oil spill disturbs me a lot. I don't know that it can be cleaned up soon at all.
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