Oil

78 Days Later

One of Florida’s perks is that you really can swim year around, as the water is almost always warm; and in general Floridians love the beach.  We live on a peninsula, surrounded by a truly breathtaking vista of sea and sand.  Having lived in California and Hawaii, with their impressive beaches and sun worshipers, Floridians do seem to spend more time enjoying their beaches than most.  Nevertheless, this weekend I experienced a “beach” phenomena as, with rare exception, everyone I spoke with said that they were going, had gone, or were trying to go to the beach, over the holiday weekend – even though it rained all weekend!  There was almost a sense of quiet desperation; as if all of Florida wanted to make sure they had one last look at our beaches, before the oil swept their beauty into memory. 

Yesterday, brought news that tar balls had now reached Lake Pontchartrain, in Louisiana, as well as the Texan coast; thus the entire Gulf of Mexico had been infected and polluted by British Petroleum’s endless leak.  The nightly news coverage is truly depressing, as globs of brown goo wash ashore, and wildlife is coated with this oily mess which literally suffocates and poisons them.  It is hard to believe that we are now in July, and the spill which began on April 20^th is still spewing oil into the Gulf. 

The nightly countdown reminds me of the birth of “Nightline” which began during the Iranian hostage crisis.  After the eleven o’clock news, Ted Koppel would appear and tell us how many days the Americans, at our embassy, in Iran had been held captive.  Now, however, there is not a presidential election looming, which at least could provide hope of another tactic or opportunity to end this crisis.

Instead, the Hurricane season, in the Atlantic, which began on June 1^st, and will run through the end of November, is what awaits us.  Having lived through the unprecedented 2004 season, the first time in history that Florida was hit by four hurricanes, Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne; and the 2005 season, which in Florida gave us such memorable storms as Dennis, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma it is impossible not to think about what a storm, in the Gulf will signify to us all.

Already, we know that the people and equipment were pulled from the area, for Hurricane Alex, and for smaller storms, this week, which have created rough seas.  I am in no way suggesting that British Petroleum should have done anything other than call their employees back to shore, but one does wonder why they did not take more urgent measures, knowing that the Hurricane season would soon begin?  Listening to the news coverage gives one the feeling of searching for a contact lens in an Olympic size pool.  Yes, you may speak of skimmers and traps and drains, but will the lens ever be found?  The clean up effort seems to quite literally be slipping through our hands, and there is no one there to catch it, as it falls away.

If we add Hurricane strength winds to the Gulf, we can well expect the oil to be carried even farther away, infecting yet untouched areas; and look forward to oil embedded storm surges and the debris which they carry, and deposit on shore.

Will America ever recover from what is happening?  Will our beaches ever be pristine again, or our wildlife free of petroleum residue?  Does it matter?  Yes! 

The federal government believes that between 1.5 to 2.5 millions of gallons of oil has been pouring into the Gulf daily.  I keep trying to line up gallons of milk, in my mind, to figure out what that means, and I cannot!  It is impossible for me to understand what is happening.  The relief wells are being drilled, one has reached 17,724 feet and the other almost 14,000 feet; they must be at 18,000 feet before they can be used to disengage the leaking well, capturing the oil.  BP hopes the wells will be finished by mid-August, another six weeks.  For now, 78 days later, over 500 hundred miles, the oil still leaks and more beaches are closed.

Besides the twenty billion dollars set aside to handle claims, British Petroleum says that they have spent another three billion dollars plus, on the clean up efforts thus far; again, I am having trouble understanding what twenty-three billion dollars looks like.  What might have been accomplished with twenty-three billion dollars, had we not had such a spill?  Could a tiny portion of that money been used by BP to make a safer and more secure rig or develop better ways to address such disasters?  How nice it might have been if BP had decided to better fund Research and Development for just such moments or months, as we are now experiencing; but they did not.

America wake-up!  Instead of cutting jobs in research and development we need to be funding the brilliant men and women who are motivated by more altruistic goals than profit.  I am not against big business, I believe that corporate America has and should continue to be a gift to this nation, very deep pockets are required to solve the problems America is facing – and big business does have the money, but they must also have the will! 

I have a flat roof, and live in a paradise where the sun shines almost daily.  Why is it that my little house, my little neighborhood, my little town, or my big state are not run on solar energy?  I have been told, by those who were in Florida, in the 1950’s that they use to have solar power, until the electric company told them there was a better way to heat and cool their houses.  It is time for America to collectively demand more from itself. 

I do not know if BP would have behaved any differently if this had happened off of the coast of the British Empire, but it did not.  The spill is in our water and on our land, what are we going to do about it?  Have we learned our lesson yet?  Are we ready to demand and act upon change? 

Sometime in the next few weeks, I will make time to go to the beach, and I will take a lot of pictures.  That is all for now.

This entry was posted on July 6, 2010 at 4:46 pm and is filed under From the Editor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.