An Anti-Offshore Drilling Argument From... Wait, Exxon?

With gas prices rising through the roof, some aren't sweating the increase.

CNN:

Exxon Mobil said Thursday that first-quarter profits jumped 69%, helped by a spike in the price of crude oil.

The world's largest publicly traded oil company said it earned $10.7 billion, or $2.14 per share, in the first three months of 2011. That's up from $6.3 billion, or $1.33 per share, in the same period last year.

Analysts had forecast earnings of $2.06 per share, according to Thomson Reuters.

"Exxon chief executive Rex Tillerson said the performance reflects higher crude oil and natural gas 'realizations,' using industry jargon for prices," the report goes on. Higher prices, bigger profits. Duh.

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BP and GOP Attempting History's Largest Cover-Up

The oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is bad. Really bad. Mile after mile after mile of bad. This bad:

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Given the sheer size and scope of the disaster, it seems impossible that someone would even consider hiding it. Yet that seems to be what BP has in mind. Out of sight, out of mind. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that the company that caused the catastrophe by cutting corners in building Deepwater Horizon would also try to cut corners in cleaning it up. BP's attempts to keep the worst of the spill off the front page have been well-documented -- they turn reporters away, while sending their own "journalists" out to cover the story.

According to a whistleblower who spoke to CNN, BP is using dispersant not to mitigate the disaster, but to hide its magnitude.

Examiner:

In a shocking interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on June 29th, Allegiance Capitol Corporation V.P. Fred McCallister said that BP is deliberately sinking oil with the toxic chemical disbursant [sic] Corexit, to hide the size of the oil spill. By sinking the oil before it can be collected, BP won't have to pay fines on it.

McCallister said, "Everybody in Europe, where the standard practice is to raise the oil and collect it, is scratching their heads, and quite honestly laughing at what's happening in the Gulf." He added, "Everyone is looking at us and wondering why we're allowing this to happen."

This is one of my suspicions confirmed. Using dispersant never seemed to make sense to me. I could see using it near the well, where it would clear the water and improve visibility, but using it elsewhere just made no sense to me. It's not like dispersant makes the oil "go away."

And this isn't the only way BP is trying to cover up the damage and hide the oil. They seem to be trying (and thankfully, failing) to literally bury the story under tons of sand.

"BP is trucking in sand to cover up the oil," writes Shannyn Moore. "Let me repeat that -- instead of cleaning up the oil they are just bringing in sand from other beaches and covering it up. In the photos and the video you can see the layering of Grand Isle, LA sand, oil and then a sand of a different type. Photo-journalists have four independent confirmations by local Sheriff's in Grand Isle, Louisiana."

If BP needs help in covering all this up -- and it's clear they do, because it turns out the inept are unsurprisingly incompetent when it comes to hiding their ineptitude -- they don't have to look far. The Republican Party, eager to portray President Obama as an executive more bumbling than George W. Bush, is ready to pitch in on the effort. Want cover up everything? That's easy. Just say everything is Barack Obama's fault.

McClatchy Newspapers:

From former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to Arizona Sen. John McCain to junior members of the House of Representatives, conservative Republicans have accused President Barack Obama of failing to do all he can to help clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill because he hasn't waived a U.S. maritime law called the Jones Act.

That statute, established in 1920, requires that all goods transported between U.S. ports be carried on U.S.-flagged, U.S.-built and U.S.-owned ships crewed by U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Critics say that's needlessly excluded foreign-flagged vessels that could have helped.

"It's a little shocking to me that a president that has such a multinational orientation as this president didn't immediately see the benefits of waiving the Jones Act and allowing all of these resources to come in," former House Majority Leader Richard Armey, R-Texas, said in remarks to Newsmax.com, a conservative website.

"Totally not true," Mark Ruge, counsel to the Maritime Cabotage Task Force, a coalition of U.S. shipbuilders, operators and labor unions, told McClatchy. "It is simply an urban myth that the Jones Act is the problem." Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen says he's received no requests for Jones Act waivers -- because none are necessary in this case.

"If the vessels are operating outside state waters, which is three miles and beyond, they don't require a waiver," Allen says.

But the Jones Act lie as become the official stance of the Republican Party. In an act of political theater, the GOP will release a partisan "report," written by the unfortunate Rep. Darrell Issa, that claims, "According to local officials, the decision to not waive the Jones Act has impaired Gulf Coast clean-up efforts. The most likely application of a broad-based Jones Act waiver would be for the operation of boats equipped with skimmers, which is one of the most effective tools to clean up the oil. Rear Admiral Jim Watson conceded in a briefing to Chairman Towns and Ranking Member Issa that the Coast Guard does not currently have access to a sufficient numbers of skimmers."

Of course, these are Republicans we're talking about here. Lying is just part of the game for them. And Issa has a raging woody for impeaching Barack Obama -- again, lying is no impediment to this plan. In fact, it's necessary to it. Obama has broken no laws, so Issa has to make up crimes. He's been approaching the problem through a laughable attempt to trump up offering Joe Sestak an unpaid position into a crime, but that really doesn't seem to have any legs at all. If his big "Sestak affair" won't get the job done, maybe his "Jones Act affair" will. The point isn't to remove the president from office -- although I'm sure he wouldn't mind it -- the point is to tarnish Obama's boy scout image in time for the 2012 presidential elections. Speaking to Pennsylvania Republicans last month, Issa told them he'd use subpoena power to harass the White House and let corporations off the hook if Republicans gain control of the House in November.

"That will make all the difference in the world," he said. "I won't use it to have corporate America live in fear that we're going to subpoena everything. I will use it to get the very information that today the White House is either shredding or not producing."

And if inventing an Obama crime means helping BP cover up an actual crime, then cover-up it is. Because, let's face it, lying and protecting corporate interests are just what Republicans do.

-Wisco


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Logic? Who Needs It? We're Talking About Money Here

Earlier this week, I wrote briefly about the decision by US District Court Judge Martin Feldman to strike down the Obama administraton's six month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling. Heavily invested [PDF] in oil and energy companies, Feldman's ruling seems more than a little... Well, let's say, "off."

See, it's not the investments themselves that throw doubt on the ruling. After all, it's entirely possible for a ruling to be good for investors and just at the same time. It's that his logic seems to be a real stretch. In his decision, Feldman wrote, "The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an unprecedented, sad, ugly and inhuman disaster. What seems clear is that the federal government has been pressed by what happened on the Deepwater Horizon into an otherwise sweeping confirmation that all Gulf deepwater drilling activities put us all in a universal threat of irreparable harm." So despite the the failure of a offshore platform anyone at BP, Transocean, or Halliburton would've told you was safe, we can't assume that other platforms are dangerous. Let me put this to you another way. The fact that there weren't enough lifeboats on the Titanic is no reason to start putting lifeboats on other ships. There's no proof that other ships might sink. So let's not get crazy.

Of course, there is reason to believe that other rigs are just as screwed up as Deepwater Horizon. For one, the overseeing agency -- the Minerals Management Service -- has been completely dysfunctional since 2002 at least. In 2008, an Interior Department's Inspector General for a deeply corrupt agency, with regulators doing cocaine and meth -- meth -- with lobbyists, open bribery, and a "culture of marketing," where the focus wasn't on extracting safely, but just extracting more. What Feldman is saying is, "The meth-head says the rigs are fine -- who are we to question that? Twitchy McFrybrain here is, after all, the expert."





And, if further evidence is needed, you can point to the fact that all the response plans for all the oil rigs are all wrong in exactly the same way. In reviewing the plans, Rep. Ed Markey was struck by the fact that the only real differences between different company's plans were the logos on the covers. "What we found was that Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell and BP have response plans that are virtually identical," he wrote. "The plans cite identical response capabilities and tout identical ineffective equipment. In some cases, they use the exact same words and made the exact same assurances... The covers of the five response plans are different colors, but the content is ninety percent identical."

In case of emergency, the plans call on an expert to be called -- complete with contact information -- who's dead. Responders are warned to be careful not to disturb walrus habitats, in the Gulf of Mexico. The Associated Press described the response plans as a "slapdash effort to follow environmental rules." To look at all this -- the drug use, the corruption, the dead experts and non-existent walruses -- and think, "Yup. Looks like these fellas have got it together," is a failure of logic that I don't have words to adequately describe. This isn't just a bad ruling, this may stand for quite some time as the worst-case example of a bad ruling.

For their part, the Obama administration has a remedy to Feldman's incompetence:

Businessweek:

The Obama administration may let certain deepwater drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico resume during a six-month halt, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said.

Rules to be issued "will include the criteria under which it is appropriate to take a look at the lifting of the moratoria," Salazar said today in Washington at a hearing of a Senate Appropriations Committee panel.

A six-month halt to deepwater exploration, imposed last month by President Barack Obama in response to the BP Plc spill, was overturned yesterday by U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans. The administration said it will appeal the decision, and Salazar announced he will reformulate the rules. Republicans and Gulf Coast Democrats have said the ban is too broad and jeopardizes tens of thousands of jobs.

I never said it was a good remedy. If it were me, I'd issue a new moratorium on drilling over 501 feet (the ban struck down was on 500 feet or more), then 502, 503, until the six months had passed. Sure, a lot of people are out of work while the moratorium is in place, but what about all the people put out of work by the spill? You've got charter boats, fishing boats, shrimpers, oyster fishermen, tourism industry people, etc. Why are they less important than people working in the oil industry? If there's another blowout, they're even more screwed. And who was the idiot who promised oil companies they'd be able to keep people working forever anyway? What entitlement do they have?

If Judge Martin Feldman's ruling proves anything, it's that once money becomes involved, people get stupid. If simple common sense can't prevail, if the freakin' obvious isn't proof enough, where can we go from here but down?

-Wisco


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The Effects of the Offshore Drilling Moratorium on Gas Prices

In Adam Smith's seminal economics work, The Wealth of Nations, he made a simple observation. If you find a stick on the ground, it doesn't have a lot of value. Let's face it, there are a lot of sticks lying around and if someone wanted one bad enough, they wouldn't have a lot of trouble finding one. For the sake of argument, we can set the value of a stick at "free."

However, if you take that stick back to your workshop and fashion an axe handle out of it, that stick suddenly has value. If you were to sell it, the value wouldn't be determined by the resource it came from -- after all, it's that same free stick -- but from the labor and skill you put into making it an axe handle. Maybe someone else doesn't have that skill, maybe they do and just don't want to take the time to do it themselves, but someone will now pay good money for your formerly free stick. In this example, 100% of the value is conferred by the woodworker's labor. When someone buys it, they aren't really buying the axe handle, what they're doing is paying you to make an axe handle after the fact.

The stick was a resource and, to tell the truth, in most cases resources aren't free. But a resource isn't a product. Even resources that have a lot of intrinsic value need to have labor applied to them -- i.e., diamonds must be cut and gold must be refined. And the value of the resource increases after it has been worked -- by labor -- into a product. In short, even when the stick isn't free, labor still increases its value. Call that Economics of Manufacturing 101, the super-simplified fast course.





I bring this up because this very simple economic truth is being lost on Republicans all over the damn place. After the Deepwater Horizon disaster, President Obama imposed a moratorium on offshore drilling. This is the worst thing ever. In fact, in a fit of cartoonish buffoonery, Mississippi governor and former head of the Republican National Committee Haley Barbour argued that the moratorium is worse than the spill itself. See, the ban puts people out of work and will drive up the cost of gas, argues Barbour -- which is half-true, it'll put people out of work. Of course, in addition to the $20 billion Obama secured from BP for damages, he got $100 million to help pay out-of-work rig workers. So no actual hit there.

And the rest of the argument is just as dumb. As Digby points out at Hullaballoo, "I'm surprised these conservatives haven't used this argument [for] the food and drug companies when their products are killing people: sure, the e coli may be deadly but we can't stop selling that tainted meat because it costs jobs and drives up prices."

But will it drive up prices? Not really, no. Crude oil is a resource, not a product. Unlike the stick, it's far from free, but the increase in value still comes mostly from labor. You have to refine crude oil or it's just useless and poisonous crap no consumer in their right mind would want. Oil is a commodity sold on a global market. Unless you want to argue that all the oil in the world is extracted from offshore drilling in the United States, any effect of the moratorium will be limited. The price at the pump isn't dictated by the availability of the resource -- like the stick, oil isn't rare -- but in the production. Despite the fact that a fortune in oil was being spewed out into the Gulf of Mexico, gas prices were falling. Keep in mind, the moratorium's been in place this whole time too.

What's actually driving the price of oil up and down right now are supply and demand. You can make all the axe handles you want but, if no one needs any, good luck selling them. As the global recession went on, it reduced demand for refined petroleum. People were cutting back, people weren't going to the mall, people weren't going on vacation -- in short, people weren't burning as much gas. Production's been outpacing demand. Too many axe handles, not enough lumberjacks, so the price falls.

Never let it be said that good news ever comes without accompanying bad news. Just as the recession (bad news) kept gas prices low (good news), so a recovery will have the opposite effect.

Gainesville Sun:

Crude oil prices have begun to rise and some analysts see that as a good sign that the economy is rebounding.

According to the New York Mercantile Exchange, prices for crude oil rose last week to their highest level since mid-May. A primary factor driving prices higher is increased demand, which is viewed as an indicator that the economy is improving. The demand has been the result of consumers being willing to buy more gas, according to Jessica Brady, manager of AAA Public Relations.

So an economic recovery will bring gas prices (and the price of everything else) back up to normal. I guess you could see rising gas prices as the bad news here, but you could also argue that the real bad news is that it'll seem to back up the Republican lie. Don't fall for it.

-Wisco


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The Grand Oil Party

It's true that Republicans often say stupid and ridiculous things. In fact, in a world where Sarah Palin is a celebrity to the rightwing base, it's expected of them. It's part of their "oppose everything" strategy and it often paints them into a rhetorical corner; if you're going to fight even the most rational positions, you're often going to find yourself playing proponent to the irrational. So, since President Obama helped arrange a $20 billion escrow fund to make sure BP will cover the costs to people's lives, the default position is that this is a bad thing. Never mind that it's a necessary thing. Twenty-one years after the Exxon Valdez spill, ExxonMobil has only paid $500 million of an up to $7 billion bill. BP will not be able to weasel out of their obligations so easily.

But, as I said, opposing everything means opposing even the good ideas. And this forces Republicans to embrace bad ideas. Texas Rep. Joe Barton -- known in some circles as "Smokey Joe" for his undying support of the oil industry -- demonstrates what this looks like.

If you need a transcript of that, Talking Points Memo has it. The teabaggers love this because, let's face it, they aren't very smart. But no one else was much of a fan. With the White House getting tough with the oil giant, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" turned out to be a really stupid line of thought. Especially from someone who used to be an oil exec himself.





The White House was quick to capitalize on Barton's apology, sending out an email blast to supporters asking them to "Stand with us to show that the American people support holding BP accountable -- and we won't apologize for doing so."

The Republicans weren't quite so fleet of foot. It's easy to understand their surprise. After all, some Republican somewhere says something equally stupid every, single day. Joe Barton's apology wasn't anything unusual, but it was on CSPAN. And it was on at a time when a lot of people tuned in to watch BP CEO Tony Hayward -- easily the most hated man in America right now -- squirm. Watching Smokey Joe kiss his backside and beg forgiveness wasn't exactly what they were hoping for. By the end of the day, GOP leadership issued a statement of opposition to his apology (more on that in a bit) and Barton's position on the Energy and Commerce Committee is now "within a centimeter" of being pulled by the party. Barton's apology was also retracted.

But the GOP was caught completely flatfooted by the public reaction to Barton's obsequiousness. Sen. John Cornyn -- who joined in on the official statement denouncing Barton -- originally said he shared Smokey Joe's concerns over the escrow account. But then it turned out that this was the politically disadvantageous position, so he changed teams.

And Barton had reason to believe the party had his back on this -- mostly because they've been saying pretty much the same thing:

John Nichols, The Nation:

Barton's not an outlier. Other prominent Republicans are rallying to BP's defense. Minnesota Congressman Michele Bachmann counseled that: "[If] I was the head of BP, I would let the signal get out there—'We're not going to be chumps, and we're not going to be fleeced.' And they shouldn't be. They shouldn't have to be fleeced and make chumps to have to pay for perpetual unemployment and all the rest—they've got to be legitimate claims."

The problem, explained Bachmann is not BP but Obama. "The other thing we have to remember is that Obama loves to make evil whatever company it is that he wants to get more power from," griped the conservative Congresswoman.

Just the day before, the Republican Study Committee issued an official statement saying almost exactly what Barton did, sans the apology. "BP's reported willingness to go along with the White House’s new fund suggests that the Obama Administration is hard at work exerting its brand of Chicago-style shakedown politics," said chairman Tom Price in the statement. "These actions are emblematic of a politicization of our economy that has been borne out of this Administration's drive for greater power and control. It is the same mentality that believes an economic crisis or an environmental disaster is the best opportunity to pursue a failed liberal agenda. The American people know much better."

And that leadership statement denouncing Barton? Yeah, I haven't forgotten about that. Even while trying to position themselves as really, really mad at BP and Smokey Joe, they make sure to give the oil company some wiggle room.

The oil spill in the Gulf is this nation's largest natural disaster and stopping the leak and cleaning up the region is our top priority. Congressman Barton's statements this morning were wrong. BP itself has acknowledged that responsibility for the economic damages lies with them and has offered an initial pledge of $20 billion dollars for that purpose.

The families and businesspeople in the Gulf region want leadership, accountability and action from BP and the Administration. It is unacceptable that, 59 days after this crisis began, no solution is forthcoming. Simply put, the American people want all of our resources, time and focus to be directed toward stopping the spill and cleaning up the mess.

Yeah, this is terrible and Joe Barton's a moron, but this whole oil gusher thing really is just a "natural disaster." This echos the statements of people like Alaska Rep. Don Young, who argue that this sort of thing is a "natural phenomenon."

"Oil has seeped into this ocean for centuries, will continue to do it," Young said earlier this month. "During World War II there was over 10 million barrels of oil spilt from ships, and no natural catastrophe... We will lose some birds, we will lose some fixed sealife, but overall it will recover."

Republicans are now pretending outrage at Smokey Joe, but in truth they're in complete agreement. It doesn't require mindreading on my part to come to this conclusion, I just need to read what they've said.

-Wisco


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The Nightmare Scenario

As I write, BP CEO Tony Hayward is just beginning his grilling by the Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on oversight and investigations. It's not going well. Capital Police have already pulled a protester out of the audience. If you missed it, Huffington Post has his prepared testimony here. It's not especially enlightening. This is bad, BP's doing everything they can, they're drilling relief wells and catching a bunch of oil and blah, blah, blah. I didn't learn anything new. If you care, Tony says he's "personally devastated" by this whole thing. I'm sure that makes everyone feel much better.

It's against this backdrop that I bring something extremely disturbing to your attention. Sharon Astyk at ScienceBlogs directs us to a comment in a comment thread at a popular oil news blog:

Reader Stephen B. pointed me to this comment at The Oil Drum by someone who argues that there's more going on under the Gulf that we think. For those who think it is strange that I be highlighting a comment in a thread, I should note that TOD attracts many, many petroleum geologists and other professionals, and while sometimes the comments are the same "pulled it out of my ass" as on every other website, often, the technical knowledge on offer is pretty astounding. This one passes my smell test, which is usually pretty good -- that doesn't mean I claim commenter Doug R is right -- it means I think his information is interesting enough to be worth exposing to a wider audience for clarification or correction.

I wouldn't normally pass something like this on. But the comment is detailed, sourced, and thorough enough to qualify as its own blog post and it's caught the attention of both Astyk and Mother Jones environmental journalist Julia Whitty. What Doug R argues is that all of the actions BP has taken so far are consistent with an escalating problem. And that problem is that the well site is basically collapsing into the well, which would result in an unstoppable gusher. "It's a race now," he writes, "a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's last gasp in a horrific crescendo."

It's not my intention to pass on rumor, especially from an anonymous comment in a blog -- no matter how knowledgeable that commenter seems to be. If he's right, even capturing a significant percentage of the oil as it escapes would be impossible -- and somewhere around 2 billion gallons will spew out into the Gulf before the well finally gives up the ghost. We'd think of the Gulf Coast as it is right now -- oil-soaked birds, poisoned marshes, and all -- as the good old days. I'm not suggesting that this is happening, but I want to point out that this is possible.

And if it's possible at Deepwater Horizon, it's possible at any other of the deepwater sites out there. This could happen and, no matter how unlikely the odds, each rig increases them. How much of a risk is it wise to take -- especially when the consequences can be so catastrophic?

If this did happen, no corporation in the world would be able to cover the damage. You could liquidate the entire company and it wouldn't make a dent. The Gulf of Mexico would be become the graveyard of extinct species and the coastlines would have to be evacuated. The cost would fall on the taxpayers and the economy would take a massive hit.

Right now, I'm working on the assumption that Doug R is either wrong or needlessly pessimistic. Mostly because I've still got to get through the day. But ask yourself how badly it is that we actually need oil. Ask yourself how long we're going to keep taking this risk. Ask yourself how bad the consequences have to be before it's not worth it anymore.

-Wisco


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Has the White House Learned Anything From the Healthcare Reform Push?

Here we go. President Obama's speech on the Deepwater Horizon disaster:

You can get the transcript here. Reviews have been mixed -- and by that, I don't mean that some have been good and some have been bad. I mean that the most thoughtful reviews have been internally mixed; it was good and it wasn't so good. The only full-on good review I could find (although I didn't spend all night looking) comes from NBC's Mark Murray.

"Yes, the president's speech lacked specifics about how to achieve energy reform (But who thought that legislative specifics would be the focus of a 15-minute address on the spill and how to respond to it?)," he wrote. "It also was short, as the AP writes, on specifics about how he would be able to keep his promises on Gulf reconstruction and the BP fund to compensate Gulf residents...

"But if the goal was to assure the public that Obama is on top of the crisis, that BP will be punished, that Gulf residents will be compensated, and that energy reform is too important to kick down the road, it certainly met expectations."





I'll accept that view. A lot of people are pointing to a post-speech reaction on MSNBC by Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, and Howard Fineman, but their input is spoiled -- at least for me -- by Matthews' obsessive attention to trivia. I don't care that the president referred to a Nobel Prize-winning physicist as a Nobel Prize winning-physicist. No one's picking up your new meme, Chris. Give it up. We're not interested. It's things like this that make it impossible for me to watch Hardball. Privately, I think of it as The Giant Yellow Head Freaks Out Over Crap that Doesn't Matter Show.

But if Matthews' punditry wasn't especially helpful, neither is Murray's glowing review. There's plenty of room for criticism of the speech, as well as praise. In the end, most of the panning comes from a disagreement over the focus. The president used his time to reassure people that the crisis was being dealt with. His harshest critics say he didn't get into enough detail on his call for energy reform. Greg Sargent pointed out the flaw in this reasoning.

"The intended audience of this speech was a general public wondering what the heck is going on with the spill and what the broader game plan is," he wrote. "This audience didn't need to hear the level of commitment to specific policy prescriptions that we all might have wanted."

My own worry isn't that there wasn't enough detail last night. We knew going in that it would be a fifteen minute address, so why on earth would we expect anything other than broad strokes? My worry is that there won't be more details coming. That neither the president nor anyone in his cabinet have learned the lessons from the fight for healthcare reform.

In that legislative push, the White House left the heavy-lifting to congress. And let's be clear about one thing; congress is a mess. Republicans have shown no appetite for even debate, let alone compromise, and Harry Reid's weak leadership was no leadership at all. What was called for was presidential leadership, which was lacking throughout much of the debate. If Obama doesn't spell out exactly what he wants, we're going to get a pile of crap.

And, in that spelling out, he needs to set the bar high. We didn't get a public option in healthcare reform because we went straight for the compromise position -- the public option. If we had shot for singlepayer, the public option would've been the logical compromise. But by starting out with nothing to bargain away, the option was doomed from the start. Obama needs to propose absolutely draconian regulation of greenhouse gases, then negotiate down to cap and trade. He needs to position the debate in his favor.

It should also be made clear that we're leaving fossil fuels behind. That part of our technological history is over. Yes, we'll still look at fuel efficiency, but we need to be told the truth -- using less oil isn't the solution. Using no oil is. It's a finite resource and we'll be forced to abandon it eventually, so why wait?

I'm going to keep saying it until it sinks in, but we have technology that literally pulls energy out of thin air and we're poking holes in the ocean floor and removing the tops of mountains for fuel. This is beyond stupid. With enough effort, we could be off oil within a few decades -- maybe even two.

But that will take leadership. And not from congress, where we already know there's a shortage. In fact, it's almost a sure bet that congress is going to get even dumber and more useless. President Obama will have to come up with the specifics that his critics are already asking for. This is much too important to allow to become a rerun of the healthcare fight.

-Wisco


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Media is No Help in Oil Disaster

I am so angry... mad, mad, mad! Observe as I stomp my feet and shake my fists at the sky. Behold my clenched teeth and the deep line between my eyebrows. See my body tremble with barely controlled rage as I let loose a long string of stream of consciousness profanity that verges on the poetic. I throw things, I break things, I jump up and down.

OK, now lets check the oil gusher in the gulf; anything change down there?

Yeah, I didn't think so. Some pundits seem to think that the biggest problem with President Obama's response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster has been a lack of visible rage. That's right, the president has been too calm in the face of a nearly unimaginable environmental catastrophe. I'm not sure if he's supposed to go down and slash at the oil slick with a samurai sword or what, but I have my doubts that Obama's rage would be any more effective than mine was. Sure, he's more powerful than I am, but I think we can all agree that believing that reality changes to match our emotional state is a belief in magic. Obama can't intimidate the well into submission by displaying his rage.

What's happening here is that pundits, having no more idea what to do than anyone else does, have to say something. Lights are on, cameras are rolling, say something. They're paid to have an opinion, regardless of whether that opinion is helpful or even makes any damned sense at all. So they do what they do -- they make stuff up. Without any polling data to back them up, they take it on themselves to tell other talking heads "what the American people want." The actual physical problem is beyond them, so they cook up a political problem that didn't previously exist. In other words punditry, you're not helping. Not that you ever do.





I'm not saying I believe that a political take on the problem is unimportant. I just think this particular political take is stupid and counterproductive. It creates an unsolvable problem; if Obama suddenly breaks into a fit of rage, they'll immediately declare it as false as it would be. If he doesn't, they'll continue this idiotic argument. Lose/lose.

Politically speaking, every crisis is an opportunity (and no, I'm not about to give you some self-help crap about Chinese characters). President Obama can lay on his back and kick his feet or he can actually do something constructive. Politically speaking, there's a disconnect between the oil in the Gulf and the gas in our tanks. Add global warming and peak oil to this environmental disaster and it becomes pretty clear that we're going to have to get off this stuff. It is, after all, 19th century technology -- we might as well be using steam engines to get around. NPR's Brian Mann spoke with a few people at a gas station and discovered that this disconnect runs deep.

Gas is something we all want -- and want cheap. Most of the people I talked to were driving what you'd have to call gas-guzzlers, so I asked whether they feel any personal culpability.

"Uh, no," [Dwayne] Carpenter says. When I ask the question, he looks sort of angry.

"You know, we have to survive up here," he says. "The truck is my livelihood. Without it, I wouldn't have my business. So if those gas prices go up, we have to pay it."

I hear this a lot. People are disgusted by the oil spill, but what really has them worried is the idea that gas prices will spike.

Getting off oil seems to be unthinkable. When Carpenter considers helping to avoid future spills, his truck disappears in his mind. Somehow, we've gotten to the point where a machine that works just as well, but doesn't burn petroleum, is fantasy. Get rid of oil and we're all hoofing it. the "teachable moment" is an overused cliche, but if there were ever a time that it fit, it's now. Former CNN correspondent Tony Collins writes that the media themselves have a responsibility here.

[J]ournalists have worked hard to keep us informed on the most important news developments. Now it’s time for news media to focus more on the policy implications. The New York Times had a good editorial Saturday on the need for the Senate to stop delaying and pass the comprehensive energy bill. This oil spill is a terrible tragedy, and there probably is no silver lining, but at least it could be a wake-up call, and journalists should take advantage of the enormous public interest in it to focus more on policy. News media should create a forum for an intelligent, reasoned debate on where we go from here with our energy policy. They should tell us what enlightened policy experts are saying about what we need to do, at last, once and for all, to drastically cut back on dependence on oil.

So no fruitless worrying over whether Obama is emoting enough. We could be at a cultural and technological turning point, the year that everything started changing, and a lot of people seem to think the big political story is the president is taking on the situation calmly -- and that this is a bad thing. Meanwhile, they're not only ignoring the real big story, but are actually distracting from it.

-Wisco


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Cheney's Chernobyl

Let's be clear here, drilling five miles beneath the ocean surface is a desperate move. It's the sort of thing you'd do if you couldn't find oil any place else. Despite what Republicans like Sarah Palin have been saying, environmentalists didn't force drilling offshore by opposing drilling on land in places like the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. Like deepwater drilling, drilling in ANWR would be a desperation move. Of the leases of federal land that oil companies hold, 68 million acres are unused. ANWR isn't the only place left. And the final nail in the coffin of "we have to do deepwater drilling" is oil price. If we were really so desperate for oil that we absolutely had to drill deep in the ocean, supply and demand would dictate that oil prices would be through the roof in historical terms. Nearly the exact opposite is true:



There is no logical reason to be drilling this deep. We don't need oil that badly.





As we see the environment in the Gulf Coast slowly poisoned, a common refrain is that this is our fault. It's our unending thirst for oil that forces us to do this -- I've walked down that road myself. But, again, the historical facts and further thought cast doubt this. If demand had forced this to happen, oil prices would reflect that. And, of course, with barrel after barrel after barrel spilling out into the Gulf by the minute, that waste isn't jacking up the price either. Turns out we can pour all that "necessary" oil down a drain and not have it make a dent. Sure, Americans burn oil as if it were our religion and that's a major problem, but to say that our demand has forced this upon ourselves isn't entirely accurate.

The fact of the matter is that the big black cloud of oil darkening the Gulf of Mexico exists for no good reason. A nearly unimaginable fortune of oil is lost and the only impacts are in public health and environment. No gas lines exist, no price spike is breaking us, no engine goes thirsty. Gusher aside, we now see what the world would be like if there were no Deepwater Horizon and we find it changed not at all. Throw in the gusher and we find it would've been a better world without it. I think we can stop talking about the "necessity" of offshore drilling now.

So why do we do this? Because it's expensive. And if something's expensive, then there's a lot of money to be made. You just need to figure out how to pass on that expense, so construction companies like Halliburton can cash in. So you get an army of lobbyists and have government create incentives for oil exploration. Suddenly, a big waste of time and money isn't so personally expensive anymore. It helps to have a corrupt corporate stooge like Dick Cheney to help you out. He actually let lobbyists write energy policy, which turned out to be awesome for the "drilling where we don't need to" industry.

CNN, July 2005:

As the energy bill moves closer to becoming law, debate is still raging over the first overhaul of national energy policy in a decade.

Supporters say the $14.5 billion bill will pave the way for more exploration and ultimately less reliance on foreign oil. Critics say it will enrich the already wealthy oil industry without addressing the need for relief from record oil and gasoline prices.

But if there's one thing that both parties can agree on, it's that the oil industry as a whole stands to benefit from its passage -- which could be an attractive point for investors looking to share the wealth.

"The bill will provide an elimination of royalties that oil and gas companies pay the government for drilling in the deep water in the Gulf of Mexico," CNN reported. "While details still need to be finalized, those companies that drill deeper will receive more relief, said KeyBanc vice president Kim Pacanovsky." The American Petroleum Institute estimated ending royalties amounted to a $5 billion giveaway to oil companies. And the only way oil companies could get that money was to drill where they had no business drilling.

The media has started calling Deepwater Horizon "Obama's Katrina." This is inaccurate.

It's Cheney's Chernobyl.

-Wisco


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Criminal Charges Coming for BP?

BP's efforts to control their gusher in the Gulf of Mexico has hit another little snag. Undersea robots with diamond saws are cutting through the pipe, in order to fit it with what even they concede would be a leaky cap. In the process of doing this, one of the saws is currently stuck. OK, I understand that the pressures five miles beneath the sea are pretty intense, but isn't the pipe they're cutting spewing oil? Oil that has well-known lubricating qualities? How could it be stuck? "If at first you don't succeed, try again. Fail better," is starting to look like BP's motto.

The ongoing crisis would be a comedy of errors, if the consequences weren't so deadly serious. The way of life everyone knew in the Gulf of Mexico may very well be over for at least a generation, if not more, and irreplaceable wetlands and species could be wiped out. Given what's at stake here, one thing is becoming clearer and clearer -- at least to me -- we shouldn't have been doing this deepwater drilling in the first place. A lot of attention has been given to the concept of prevention, but humans being what humans are, we can't make disaster impossible. We can make it less likely, but that's what we thought we did. Turns out we didn't. Corners were cut, laws were likely broken, safety measures were ignored. And, even if every precaution had been taken, if all the laws had been obeyed -- in fact, if BP had gone beyond the requirements and put extra safeguards in place -- no one would honestly be able to say that a disaster like this had been made completely impossible. And we never will. Machines break down, people screw up, the earth itself does unpredictable things. Preventing petroleum contaminations like this are extremely important, but it's only 50% of what should be our concern and the focus of our research. The other 50% should be mitigation and we haven't done a damned thing in that area. The unthinkable has happened and we have no idea what to do. Turns out we got way ahead of ourselves on this one. We're just poking around in the dark.

But there are consequences other than the wetlands and the species and the livelihoods and the public health. There is the law. For their part, the Obama administration is moving to see to it that those consequences come through.

McClatchy Newspapers:

Responding to criticism that it hasn't been forceful enough in its response to the largest oil spill in U.S. history, the Obama administration on Tuesday announced a criminal investigation into the deadly explosion and installed a no-nonsense Coast Guard admiral as the public face of the response, instead of BP.

The effect of the April 20 spill, including "oil for miles and miles" in the Gulf of Mexico, is "heartbreaking to see," Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday afternoon during a visit to New Orleans. He also pledged not to forget the 11 lives lost in the explosion.

The nation has an obligation to "investigate what went wrong and to determine what reforms are needed so that we never have to experience a crisis like this again," President Barack Obama said after meeting at the White House with the two men he'd appointed to head an inquiry into the blast.

"If our laws were broken, leading to this death and destruction, my solemn pledge is that we will bring those responsible to justice on behalf of the victims of this catastrophe and the people of the Gulf region," the president said.

If you're picturing BP execs behind bars -- or even in court -- you'll probably be disappointed. "It's highly unlikely that senior managers of the company were sufficiently personally involved in this to be charged," said David Uhlmann, a University of Michigan professor and former prosecutor specializing in environmental crimes told Politico's Josh Gerstein.

"It doesn't mean BP executives are going to be wearing stripes," agreed David Pettit, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "If corporations are criminally prosecuted, it's usually resolved in some lawyers' offices."

But the move opens other doors. Right now, BP is under a $75 million liability cap -- which is an insanely small amount of money when compared to the billions this incident is likely to cost. Congress has resisted raising the cap, because they worry that it'd dissuade companies from doing this stupid, stupid, stupid deepsea drilling and this would somehow be bad. I'm not extremely clear on how, but congress has never needed a decent argument before. If BP is guilty of crimes, that all changes.

Writing for Business Insider last month, Gus Lubin reported, "Criminal charges would put an axe through a $75 million cap on civil charges for oil pollution." This is why, after the criminal investigation was announced, BP's stock dropped. In fact, since the Deepwater Horizon wreck, the company has already lost $75 billion in market value.

If this puts off other companies from investing in deepwater drilling, as some in congress fear, then what does that say about the safety of such ventures? Corporations won't want to drill, because the monetary consequences of a screw up would be too great. Isn't this an admission that they see another deepsea disaster as a real -- and prohibitively likely -- possibility? Put a lot of money on the line and suddenly it becomes a bad bet.

If the criminal probe keeps corporations out of the deep water, then it's hard to see this as an argument against it. If corporations don't think their money is safe with these wells, why should we believe these wells are safe at all?

-Wisco


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The Oceans Can't Absorb the Oil -- Here's Why

At one point in my life, I thought brewing beer would be a great hobby. And it was. The brewing itself was great, as was enjoying the beer afterward, but the bottling was a pain. It turned out I didn't like that at all, so I eventually quit making beer. Still, I'm glad I did it, because I learned a lot of things that I still use today. One of those things is the knowledge that beer yeast commits suicide. The yeast eats sugar and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide. The problem is that alcohol and CO2 aren't very good for yeast and they basically change their own environment so much that they can't survive in it. I keep coming back to this in my own mind as a warning to humanity -- if we're not careful, we'll be killed by your own waste. Yeast cells are mindless, we don't have that excuse.

But another, less philosophical lesson is that certain natural processes can be halted by the process itself. The beer yeast are only capable of fermenting so much sugar; if you want much stronger beer than normal, you need a different strain of yeast. Champagne yeast, maybe, or a strain developed for barley wine. If not, all the yeast will die off before the job is done and your beer won't be any stronger, just sweeter.

All of this is just a way to explain the problem with oil plumes from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, natural bacteria will eventually consume the oil -- unless that oil is too concentrated. In this situation, the bacteria creates an environment where it can't survive. And neither can anything else. In terms of helping sea life, you aren't. You're just making an already unsurvivable environment worse.





A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times spoke with Dr. Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia involved with studying the problem:

"There's a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water," said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. "There's a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column."

The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

[...]

Dr. Joye said the findings about declining oxygen levels were especially worrisome, since oxygen is so slow to move from the surface of the ocean to the bottom. She suspects that oil-eating bacteria are consuming the oxygen at a feverish clip as they work to break down the plumes.

Some bacteria, described as "anaerobic," don't need oxygen to survive. But this is clearly not the case here. If it's consuming oxygen, it's using it. The bacteria are creating a dead zone, where even they can't survive. There's too much sugar in our beer. And, of course, this bacteria is dying off before the job is done. This is a double whammy; oxygen in these areas of the sea is depleted and, of course, the toxic oil remains.

This all goes a long way toward explaining the latest stupid thing that BP CEO Tony Hayward has said. In addition to saying that, compared to all the water in the world, his gusher was "relatively tiny" and that workers sickened by the chemical dispersants and oil probably just have food poisoning, Tony also says there ain't no damned plumes.

Associated Press:

Disputing scientists' claims of large oil plumes suspended underwater in the Gulf of Mexico, BP PLC's chief executive on Sunday said the company has largely narrowed the focus of its cleanup to surface slicks rolling into Louisiana's coastal marshes.

[...]

Hayward said that oil's natural tendency is to rise to the surface, and any oil found underwater was in the process of working its way up.

"The oil is on the surface," Hayward said. "There aren't any plumes."

This is, of course, BS. In response, Rep. Edward Markey told AP that BP stands for "Blind to Plumes." Luckily, even without my handy explanation of the problem with having plumes of oil in your beer, the American public isn't buying all this BP spin. A Gallup poll finds that, although people believe the Obama administration has reacted poorly to the situation, they also fault BP's response. In fact, more fault BP than the White House. A lot more. Where 53% say the response from President Obama was poor to very poor, 73% say the same of BP. BP is now as popular as Dick Cheney. I'd imagine both Cheney and the oil company have roughly the same fans.

Still, it's BP who has the equipment to deal with this. Personally, I believe that all the company's American assets should be seized and its presence in this country dissolved forever. But we all know that's never going to happen. So we have to rely on BP to get the job done. But their rampant dishonesty and sophistry isn't helpful. Barring what I consider the sanest solution -- the corporate death penalty -- it seems the wisest thing to do from here on out would be to leave no decision at all to BP. While they're onsite, dealing with the problem they created, they shouldn't even be able to decide what they have for lunch. This seems to be the case now, but it should've been the case all along.

-Wisco


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BP, Fried Brains, and the Three Little Pigs

We've got half a dam out there in the Gulf of Mexico right now. And, as anyone with any familiarity with logic will be able to tell you, a half a dam is not actually a dam. While BP's "top kill" effort is showing some signs of success, it's way too soon to break out the champagne.

Associated Press:

The Coast Guard says BP is having some success slowing the Gulf of Mexico oil leak by injecting mud but the fix isn't done yet.

Coast Guard Lt. Commander Tony Russell said reports today that Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the operation, had called the procedure a success were incorrect. He said Allen said that the flow of mud was stopping some of the oil and gas but had a ways to go before it proved successful.

BP spokesman Tom Mueller said the effort that started Wednesday to plug the blown-out with mud, called a top kill, was continuing.

Overlooked by most of the media is an internal BP memo comparing workers to the three little pigs and setting the value of their lives at $1,000. In determining the cost/benefit of protecting workers from explosions, BP decided that blast-resistant housing was way too expensive to protect piggies who were only worth a grand a pop. So they went with regular old trailers. Sure, it's evil. But golly, it's cute.


Click for fullsized image

Blast-resistant housing is just ten bucks per worker over the cost-to-benefit equation. Sorry piggies. For their part, the oil behemoth says they've "fundamentally changed the culture of BP" since the last disaster they've been involved with -- a Texas oil refinery explosion five years ago. Apparently, not enough to save 11 workers on Deepwater Horizon.

And not enough to have avoided this:

Get what that marine toxicologist said? The chemical dispersants literally fry the brain. And BP's hiring people they've put out of work, people who feel they have no choice, to go out -- without protection -- and work with these chemicals. Makes you wonder what those piggies are worth to BP. Less than the cost of a respirator, maybe. The Coast Guard finally had to step in and make BP stop sending these people out.

The next time some grinning idiot tells you that corporations are your friends, remember all this. Among international corporations -- and even most large nationals -- BP is not an exception. What's happening here amounts to a random corporation getting the sort of scrutiny they should've gotten all along and that scrutiny is telling us who they really are. Let me emphasize the word "random" there -- nearly any corporation, exposed to this level of attention, would fare as badly. BP's just in the spotlight right now.

And allow me to repeat what I think is very good advice in dealing with regulatory oversight and big corporations; assume they're trying to get away with something, because they are. Always. You may believe that they're a necessary evil, but don't ever forget that they're an evil. We should trust BP, Transocean, Halliburton, or Consolidated Weiner-on-a-Stick no more than they can absolutely prove they can be trusted.

To do anything else is to enter into a one-sided suicide pact, where you agree to take the bullet and the corporations agree to sell it to you.

-Wisco


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Kicking the Oil Habit

If the Deepwater Horizon oil gusher -- now going into its second month -- isn't enough to get you to start thinking that maybe burning stuff for energy isn't all that high tech or safe, maybe three new reports by the National Academy of Sciences will push you over the edge. Or maybe not.

As part of its most comprehensive study of climate change to date, the National Research Council today issued three reports emphasizing why the U.S. should act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop a national strategy to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change. The reports by the Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering, are part of a congressionally requested suite of five studies known as America's Climate Choices.

"These reports show that the state of climate change science is strong," said Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences. "But the nation also needs the scientific community to expand upon its understanding of why climate change is happening, and focus also on when and where the most severe impacts will occur and what we can do to respond."

"NAS panels study a problem from many angles, include the highest level of relevant expertise, and have their work carefully assessed by peer reviewers," says Peter Frumhoff of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "They are deservedly a premier source of influential scientific guidance."





Let's face it, we've always known that oil and coal weren't the future. When we think of stories and movies set in the future, we don't think of stuff powered by burning other stuff -- unless its Road Warrior. In our heart of hearts, we've always imagined a future that was clean. No smoke, no toxic sludge, no accompanying emphysema, asthma, and cancer. Yet we now have the ability to literally pull power out of thin air and we can't be bothered with it. We need oil, oil, oil and coal, coal, coal.

Why? Because no one owns that thin air. If you can't have a wind spill, neither can you sell it. You can sell the power generated by this wind -- and solar, for that matter -- but no one sells the fuel, which in the cases of both wind and solar power is the sun. An entire industry, huge and powerful, would simply disappear. And, since fossil fuels are a limited resource, this is going to happen eventually anyway. But until that last drop of oil, that last chunk of coal, is extracted from the earth at great expense, that industry has no intention of shutting down.

Ask yourself this; why is it taking BP so long to close off that gusher? Might it be because it is a gusher? There's an unimaginable fortune out there, pouring out into the Gulf of Mexico. It's a stream a liquid gold so massive you can easily see it from space. And it's all still there, not just under the sea bed, but in the sea itself. If BP is very careful and everyone tiptoes around them, they can get a good chunk of that fortune back, while making sure the well is still viable for future drilling. Some of that oil now killing off sea life in the Gulf of Mexico is still going to find it's way into someone's tank. It may take a little longer to do it this way, but we've got to have priorities here.

And this is the problem. We've gotten to the point where the rewards of oil outweigh our own safety. If we spill our drink, we've become such out of control alcoholics that we'll suck the rag we use to clean it up. And, like alcoholics, we won't listen to reason. Everything is fine. We can handle it. This isn't a problem.

So the oil and coal companies -- the fuel industry -- take the role of enabler. We're right, everything is fine. There is no problem. Just have another drink and forget about it. Those scientists? They don't know what they're talking about. They're just trying to get grant money.

Of course, the fuel industry makes one helluva lot more off selling fossil fuels than anyone would ever make getting us off the stuff. In the monetary rewards game, saying scientists have the most to gain is completely insane. But addiction is completely insane as well, so given a choice between a harsh truth and a comforting lie, we'll take the comforting lie every time.

"This is yet another wake-up call on the threat of global climate change," said Sen. John Kerry in a statement. "These studies clearly demonstrate the urgency for Senate action on the American Power Act."

Yeah, they do. But drunks aren't famous for their attraction to reason or fact. Sure, we woke up with our head in the toilet one morning, but it's not like we do that every morning.

Everything is fine. We can handle it. This isn't a problem.

Wisco


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Petroleum Metropolis

When I think of America's relationship with the rest of the world, I often think of Fritz Lang's classic silent movie Metropolis. In that movie, most of humanity works deep underground under terrible conditions, making sure the machinery of the world keeps running. Meanwhile, a wealthy elite live above ground, enjoying a careless life of leisure, made possible by all the work going on beneath their feet.

And the people living above ground have no idea what's going on below. All this ease is just the way things are, because it's always been this way. Self-absorbed and incurious, they live lives of little consequence -- the ultimate consumers -- completely unaware of the suffering that makes their lives possible.

I think of this especially when I look at the news. We aren't as disconnected as the upper class of Metropolis, but we are disconnected. Things go on that make our lives possible that we have no clue about. Worse, we don't seem to have any interest in the subject. Unlike the clueless aristocrats of Lang's movie, we work too. But our way of life is supported by war and exploitation, by environmental destruction and sweat shops, by poverty and the repression of human rights.





But sometimes, the real world -- the wider world -- intrudes and we see the world as it really is. That is, if we're interested. Too often we aren't. The oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico gives us a glimpse at how the other half lives, but you wonder how many will actually look.

McClatchy Newspapers:

Like many of her neighbors, Celina Harpe is angry about the oil pollution at her doorstep. No longer can she eat the silvery fish that dart along the shore near her home. Even the wind that hurries over the water reeks of oil waste.

"I get so mad," she said. "I feel very sad."

Harpe, 70, isn't a casualty of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. She lives in a remote corner of Alberta, Canada, where another oil field that's vital to the United States is damaging one of the world's most important ecosystems: Canada's northern forest.

Across the globe, people such as Harpe in oil-producing regions are watching the catastrophe in the Gulf with a mixture of horror, hope and resignation. To some, the black tide is a global event that finally may awaken the world to the real cost of oil.

18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater are destroying the rainforest in Ecuador and oil slicks float on the Niger delta. "Spills, leaks and deliberate discharges are happening in oil fields all over the world, and very few people seem to care," said Judith Kimerling, a professor of law and policy at the City University of New York, told McClatchy. "No one is accepting responsibility. Our fingerprint is on those disasters because we are such a major consumer of oil."

And the fact that the world's oil reserves are dwindling only makes extraction more dangerous. The Deepwater Horizon gusher would've been capped almost immediately if it had been on land, but deep in the ocean, it poses real challenges. We're not drilling out there, where it's more expensive to get to, because we think that's fun. We're drilling out there because we're running out of oil. It'll be a while before we're comfortable with drilling off our own shores, but I have my doubts whether we'll feel as strongly about drilling off someone else's. The United States alone accounts for roughly a quarter of the world's oil consumption, yet we seem to believe that the damage caused by oil exploration isn't our problem.

"When [oil companies] go into a country like Ecuador or Peru, where there is no meaningful regulation, they take advantage of that," says Kimerling. "They are more careless, and go in with an attitude that they can do whatever they want... The U.S. government has not shown any interest in the environmental disasters that are being caused by our companies in other countries."

Now that it's happening to us, maybe we'll start to worry about what our oil addiction is doing to other people. Some guy from Ecuador could point to the oil slick threatening the Florida beaches and say, "Welcome to my world." This isn't anything new, it's just new to us. Maybe it will be our wake-up call.

Frankly, I have my doubts.

-Wisco


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The Other Side of the Story

Let's take a look at the economic situation. Never mind the naysayers, the gloom-and-doomers, the glass-half-empty types, some of us are doing just fine. If you look hard enough and long enough, you can find good, simple, hard-working Americans who are managing to get along. Good people, with good, honest values, who know the value of a dollar because they've got a boatload of them:

Associated Press:

Riding record oil prices in the third quarter, Exxon Mobil Corp. on Thursday posted the biggest quarterly profit ever for a U.S. company: $14.83 billion, or about $112,000 a minute.

The results, amounting to $2.86 a share, beat the Irving, Texas, company's previous record and shattered analysts' average expectation of $2.38 a share, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

Consumer groups and politicians saw reason for anger in those numbers.

"Our economy is suffering from many factors, but one of them is the price of oil and our nation's dependence on it," said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Markey said that "investments in renewable energy continue to lag with the world's most profitable company, and as an industry as a whole."

"Consumers got credit card debt and empty wallets, while Exxon got double-digit billions," says Judy Dugan of Consumer Watchdog. "Citizens deserve to be mad. They should demand that government get back in the business of protecting them from corporate greed."

Those simple country folk with their good ol' fashioned common sense and small town values continue to make more money than any company in history, quarter after quarter, year after year. Yay for them!





Meanwhile, liberal whiners in Galveston, Texas complain that government isn't coming to hold their hands. "Boo hoo!" these cityslickers say, "Hurricane Ike wiped us out and we're not getting any help! Boo-hoo-hoo!"

"Things are far from normal in Galveston. Take a drive in Channelview or Bayou Shore Drive or the middle-class neighborhoods north and south of Offatts Bayou. Take a drive through the war zone formerly known as downtown Galveston," writes Dolph Tillotson for the Galveston Daily News. "Our town is under siege to destruction, loss and collapse, and middle-class families are wondering whether to return and if they can return."

Tillotson writes that Galveston "needs help, and lots of it, from the Texas Senate and House delegations." That's right, go crying to Washington. Didn't Dolph and the people of Galveston get the memo? Big gummint is bad -- and they should applaud the fact that it's off their backs. No one's taking wealth from other states to redistribute it in Texas; after all, that's socialism. They should build lean-tos from the roofs of ruined buildings and live in those. That's the American way. If they're really lucky, George W. Bush will come by in an armored Ford Escalade and hand out little flags on wooden dowels! Nothing lifts the spirits more than a photo op display of hollow patriotism. Make sure you wave them real hard!

Of course, government understands that some good Americans do need help. Compassionate conservatism and all... That's why we're doling out tax dollars hand over fist to bail out banks. See, banks need to be able to loan money to get the economy back on track, so the government gave them $700 billion to loan out.

Except the banks, with their brilliant business sense, aren't using that money to make loans. They're using that money to buy other banks. So, when you get turned down for a loan, it's because the bank has taken all that money and used it for a merger.

This practice isn't without it's predictable critics -- Democrats want to make sure the money is used to make loans, since that was the whole purpose of the bailout, but they're just liberal whiners. They probably don't even have little flags on wooden dowels. And big government bureaucrats in Washington don't like it either.

"The capital is there both to be lent and to make them stronger, so counterparties will have more confidence in them and lend to them more freely," said Treasury Department regulator John Dugan. Typically, he thinks Washington should decide how to use your money, not humble country bumpkins in corporate suites.

In fact, some believe that government should pay attention to all the tax money they hand out to small town family-values types in limos. For example, the US has paid $6 billion (or more) to private contractors in Iraq. What did taxpayers get for that money? None of your bees' wax, that's what.

The U.S. has spent about $6 billion on private security contractors and related services in Iraq, although the real tally remains unknown because the government has failed to track security costs, according to an audit from Iraq released Thursday.

Since the war began, the U.S has hired some 77 private security firms to provide armed guards to protect U.S. and Iraqi government officials, supplies and buildings in the middle of the war zone, said the audit by the Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Iraq.

Another 230 companies have provided related "security services" that range from intelligence gathering for private corporations in Iraq to protecting computer networks from hackers, according to the audit and interviews.

We don't know exactly how much we paid to get... well, no one really knows what. But it's totally worth it, because small business owners like the multi-billion dollar Blackwater USA say it is. Big government not only isn't going to tell them what to do with all that money, but it's not even exactly sure what we've hired them to do. Seriously, what are they doing with that money? No one knows, because big government is off their backs and paying no attention at all. Good for them -- give them little flags on wooden dowels. Maybe they can hand them out in Iraq.

These are the sort of common sense solutions brought to you by the Republican Party. If all of this seems like the best goddam way to run a railroad, then vote for John McCain.

However, if you're a liberal, commie treehugger who thinks none of this makes any damned sense at all, maybe you should just stay home. President McCain will thank you. In fact, maybe he'll drive by your house in a big armored Ford Escalade and give you a little flag on a wooden dowel.

Golly, but wouldn't that be fine?

-WIsco